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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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TRI -WEEKLY TU5U CkTlOtf of Thg BC5>T COWIgt/r U STAHltM^ LlTER»>TVRg 




Englisn Men of Letters, Edited by John Money 



LIFE 




BY 



GOLDWIN SMITH 

Author of "FALSE HOPES," &c., &c. 



Entered at the Post Office, N. Y. as second-class matter. ^ 



Copyrifrht, 1884, by John W, Lovell Co. 



NEAV YOR 





0fn^ ^'wr^ ^^^^ ^^^^ p^^ ^^^^ jHHk j^H^ 1^1 ^^B^ iBr^ i^" 



A neat CLOTH BINDING- for ti: - ic.i. .e can be obtained i.>m any bookse5!er o' newsdealer, price 15cts. 



LOVELL'S LIBRARY-CATALOGUE. 



1. Hyperion 20 

2. Outre-Mer 20 

3. The Happy Boy 10 

4. Arne 10 

5. Frankenstein 10 

6. TheLast of theMohicans.20 

7. Clytie 20 

8. The Moonstone, Part 1 . 10 

9. The Moonstone, Part II. 10 

10. Oliver Twist 20 

11. The Coming Race 10 

12. Leila 10 

13. The Three Spaniards.. .20 

14. The Tricks of the Greeks. 20 

15. L' Abbe Constantin 20 

16. Freckles 20 

17. The Dark Colleen 20 

18. They were Married .... 10 

19. Seekers After God 20 

20. The Spanish Nun 10 

21. Green Mountain Boys.. 20 

22. Fleurette 20 

23. Second Thoughts 20 

24. The New Magdalen .... 20 

25. Divorce 20 

26. Life of Washington 20 

27. Social Etiquette 15 

28. Single Heart, Double 
.T Face 10 

29. Irene ; or, The Lonely 

Manor 20 

30. Vice Versa 20 

31. Ernest Maltravers 20 

32. The Haunted House... 10 

33. John Halifax 20 

34. 800 Leagues on the 
Amazon 10 

35. The Cryptogram 10 

36. Life of Marion 20 

37. Paul and Virginia 10 

38. A Tale of Two Cities 20 

39. The Hermits 20 

40. An Adventure in Thule, 
etc 10 

41. A Marriage in High Life2o 

42. Robin 20 

43. Two on a Tower 20 

44. Rasselas 10 

45. Alice ; a sequel to Er- 

nest Maltravers 20 

46. Duke of Kandos .20 

47. Baron Munchausen 10 

48. A Princess of Thule.. ..20 

49. The Secret Despatch.. ..20 

50. Early Days of Christian- 
ity, 2 Parts, each 20 

51. Vicar of Wakefield 10 

52. Progress and Poverty ... 20 

53. The Spy 20 

54. East Lynne 20 

55. A Strange Story 20 

56. Adam Bede, Part 1 15 

Adam Bede, Part II 15 

57. The Golden Shaft 20 

58. Portia 20 

59. Last Days of Pompeii. . .20 

60. The Two Duchesses 20 

61. TomBrown'sSchoolDays.20 

62. Wooing O't, 2 Pts. each. 15 

63. The Vendetta 20 

64. Hypatia, Part 1 15 

Hypatia, Part II 15 



65. Selma 15 

66. Margaret and her Brides- 
maids 20 

67. Horse Shoe Robinson, 

2 Parts, each 15 

68. Gulliver's Travels 20 

69. Amos Barton 10 

70. The Berber 20 

71. Silas Marner 10 

72. Queen of the County . . .20 

73. Life of Cromwell 15 

74. Jane Eyre 20 

75. Child'sHist'ry of Engl'd . 20 

76. Molly Bawn 20 

']■]. Pilloiie 15 

78. Phyllis 20 

79. Romola, Part 1 15 

Romola, Part II 15 

80. Science in ShortChapters. 20 

81. Zanoni 20 

82. A Daughter of Heth 20 

83. Right and Wrong Uses of 

the Bible 20 

84. NightandMoming,Pt.I.i5 
NightandMorningjPt.II 15 

85. Shandon Bells 20 

86. Monica .10 

87. Heart and Science 20 

88. The Golden Calf 20 

89. The Dean's Daughter ... 20 

90. Mrs. Geoffrey 20 

91. Pickwick Papers, Part 1 . 20 
Pickwick Papers.Part II. 20 

92. Airy, Fairy Lilian 20 

93. Macleod of Dare 20 

94. Tempest Tossed, Part 1 . 20 
Tempest Tossed, P't IL20 

95. Letters from High Lat- 

itudes. ... 20 

96. Gideon Fley ce 20 

97. India and Ceylon 20 

98. The Gypsy Queen 20 

99. The Admiral's Ward 20 

00. Nimport, 2 Parts, each ..15 

01. Harry Holbrooke. 20 

02. Tritons, 2 Parts, each .. 15 

03. Let Nothing You Dismay. TO 

04. LadyAudley's Secret... 20 

05. Woman's Place To-day. 20 

06. Dunallan, 2 parts, each. 15 

07. Housekeeping and Home 
making 15 

08. No New Thing 20 

09. TheSpoopendykePapers.2o 

10. False Hopes 15 

11. Labor and Capital 20 

12. Wanda, 2 parts, each ... 15 

13. More Words aboil^ Bible. 20 

14. Monsieur Lecocq, P't. 1.20 
Monsieur Lecocq, Pt. 1 1. 20 

15. An Outline of Irish Hist. 10 

16. The Lerouge Case 20 

17. Paul Clifford 20 

18. A New Lease of Life.. .20 

19. Bourbon Lilies 20 

20. Other People's Money.. 20 

21. Lady of Lyons 10 

22. Ameline de Bourg 15 

23. A Sea Queen 20 

24. The Ladies Lindores. ..20 

25. Haunted Hearts 10 

261, Loys, Lord Beresford.. .20 



127, Under Two Flags, Pt I. 20 
Under Two Flags, Pt II.20 

28. Money 10 

29. In Peril of His Life 20 

30. India; What can it teach 

us? 20 

3 1. Jets and Flashes 20 

32. Moonshine and Margue- 
rites ...10 

33. Mr. Scarborough's 
Family, 2 Parts, each . . 15 

34. Arden 15 

35. Tower of Perceraont. . . .20 

36. Yolande 20 

37. Cruel London 20 

38. The Gilded Clique 20 

39. Pike County Folks 20 

40. Cricket on the Hearth.. . 10 

41. Henry Esmond 20 

42. Strange Adventures of a 
Phaeton 20 

43. Denis Duval 10 

44. 01dCuriosityShop,P't 1. 15 
OldCuriosityShop.P'rt II. 15 

45. Ivanhoe, Parti 15 

Ivanhoe, Part II 15 

46. White Wings 20 

47. The Sketch Book 20 

48. Catherine 10 

49. Janet's Repentance 10 

50. Bamaby Rudge, Part I..1S 
Barnaby Rudge, Part II. 15 

51. Felix Holt 20 

52. Richelieu 10 

53. Sunrise, Part 1 15 

53. Sunrise, Part II 15 

54. Tour of the World in 80 
Days 20 

55. Mystery of Orcival 20 

56. Lovel, the Widower.. .. 10 

57. Romantic Adventures of 

a Milkmaid 10 

58. DavidCopperfield, Part 1.20 
DavidCopperfield,P'rt 11.20 

59. Charlotte Temple • . 10 

60. Rienzi, 2 Parts? each ...15 

61. Promise of Marriage.. .. 10 

62. Faith and Unfaith 20 

63. The Happy Man 10 

64. Barry Lyndon 20 

65. Eyre's Acquittal 10 

66. 20,000 Leagues Under the 

Sea 20 

67. Anti-Slavery Days 20 

68. Beauty's Daughters 20 

69. Beyond the Sunrise 20 

70. Hard Times 20 

71. Tom Cringle's Log .... 20 

72. Vanity Fair 30 

73. LTnderground Russia 20 

74. Midd]emarch,2 Pts.each.20 

75. Sir Tom 20 

76. Pelham 20 

77. The Story of Ida 10 

78. Madcap Violet 20 

79. The Little Pilgrim 10 

80. Kilmeny 20 

81. Wiiist, or Bumblepuppy?. 10 

82. That beautiful \yretch.. 20 

83. Her Mother's Sin 20 

84. Green Pastures, etc 20 

85. Mysterious Isl<md, Pt I.ij 




3EAUTY. 

How to Beautify the Comulexion. 

All Tromeii kno^s^tbat it is beauty, rather tban genins, wbicb all generationg 
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Ladies alHicted with Tan, Freckles, Rough or Discolored Skin, should lose 
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BU>-"H AST'S CAKBOL.IC MEDICINAI. SOAP cures all 
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"1 



A Manual of Hygiene for Women and the Household. 

Illustrated. By Mrs. E. G. Cook, M,D. 
12mo, extra cloth, - ---_-« $1.50 

This new work has already received strong words of 
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HYGIENIC PUBLISHING CO., 917 Broadway, New Yorli, 

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**>. 



%. 



^^'c 






C O W P E R. 



CHAPTER I. 

EARLY LIFE. 

CowPER is the most important English poet of the period be- 
tween Pope and the illustrious group headed by Wordsworth, Byron, 
and Shelley, which arose out of the intellectual ferment of the 
European Revolution. As a reformer of poetry, who called it 
back from conventionality to nature, and at the same time as the 
teacher of a new school of sentiment which acted as a solvent 
upon the existing moral and social system, he may perhaps him- 
self be numbered among the precursors of the Revolution, 
though he was certainly the mildest of them all. As a senti- 
mentahst he presents a faint analogy to Rousseau, whom in natural 
temperament he somewhat resembled. He was also the great poet of 
the religious revival which marked the latter part of the eighteenth 
century in England, and which was called Evangelicism within the 
establishment, and Methodism without. In this way he is associated 
with Wesley and Whitefield, as well as with the philanthropists of 
the movement, such as Wilberforce, Thornton, and Clarkson. As 
a poet he touches, on different sides of his character, Goldsmith, 
Crabbe, and Burns. With Goldsmith and Crabbe he shares the 
honour of improving English taste in the sense of truthfulness and 
simplicity., To Burns he felt his affinity, across a gulf of social cir- 
cumstance, and in spite of a dialect not yet made fashionable by 
Scott. Besides his poetry, he holds a high, perhaps the highest 
place, among English letter-writers ; and the collection of his letters 
appended to Southey's biography forms, with the biographical por- 
tions of his poetry, the materials for a sketch of his life. Southey's 
biography itself is very helpful, though too prolix and too much 
filled out with dissertations for common readers. Had its author 
only done for Cowper what he did for Nelson ! * 

William Cowper came of the Whig nobility of the robe. His 
great-uncle, after whom he was named, was the Whig Lord Chan- 

* Our acl^nowlcdcrinents 7>.rr^ a'so flue to Mr. Beiiham, the writer of the Memoir pre- 
fixed to the Globe Edition of Cowper. 



8 CO IVPER. 

cellor of Anne and George I. His gi-andfallier ^^•as that Spencer 
Cowper, judge of the Common Pleas, for love of whom the pretty 
Quakeress drowned herself, and who, by the rancour of party, was 
indicted for her murder. His father, the Rev. John Cowper, D.D., 
was chaplain to George II. His mother was a Donne, of the race 
of the poet, and descended by several lines from Henry III. A 
Whig and a gendeman he was by birth, a Whig and a gentleman 
he remained to the end. He was born on the 15th November (old 
style), 1 731, in his father's rectory of Berkhampstead. From 
nature he received, with a large measure of the gifts of o-enius, 
a still larger measure of its painful sensibilities. In his portrait 
by Romney the brow bespeaks intellect, the features feeling and 
refinement, the eye madness. The stronger parts of character, the 
combative and propelling forces, he evidently lacked from the be- 
ginning. For the battle of life he was totally unfit. His judgment 
in its healthy state was, even on practical questions, sound enough, 
as his letters abundantly prove ; but his sensibility not only ren- 
dered him incapable of wrestling with a rough world, but kept him 
always on the verge of madness, and frequently plunged him into it. 
To the malady which threw him out of active life we owe not 
the meanest of English poets. 

At the age of thirty-two, writing of himself, he sa3"s, " I am of a 
very singular temper, and very unlike all the men that I have ever 
conversed with. Certainly I am not an absolute fool, but I have 
more weakness than the greatest of all the fools I can recollect at 
present. In short, if I was as fit for the next world as I am unfit 
for this — and God forbid I should speak it in vanity — I would not 
change conditions with any saint in Christendom." Folly produces 
nothing good, and if Cowper had been an absolute fool, he would 
not have written good poetry. But he does not exaggerate his own 
weakness, and that h.e should have l)ecome a power among men is 
a remarkable triumph of the influences which have given birth to 
Christian civilization. 

The world into which the child came was one very adverse to 
him, and at the same "time very much in need of him. It was a 
world from which the spirit of poetry seemed to have fled. There 
could be no stronger proof of this than the occupation of the throne 
of S]5enser, Shakspeare. and Milton by the arch-versifier Pope. 
The Revolution of 1688 was glorious, but unlike the Puritan Rev- 
olution which it followed, and in the political sphere partly ratified, 
it was profoundly prosaic. Spiritual religion, the source of Puritan 
grandeur and of the poetry of Milton, was almost extinct ; there 
was not much more of it among the Nonconformists, who had now 
become to a great extent mere Whigs, with a decided Unitarian 
tendency. The Church was little better than a political force, cul- 
tivated and manipulated by political leaders for their own purposes. 
The Bishops were either politicians or theological polemics collect- 
ing trophies of victory over free-thinkers as titles to higher prefer- 
ment. The inferior clergy, as a body, were far nearer In character 
to Trulliber than to Dr. 'Primrose ; coarse, sordid, neglectful of 



CO WPER. 9 

their duties, shamelessly addicted to sinecurism and pluralities, 
fanatics in their Toryism and in attachment to their corporate 
privileges, cold, rationalistic and almost heathen in their preachings, 
if they preached at all. The society of the day is mirrored in the 
pictures of Hogarth, in the works of Fielding and Smollett ; hard 
and heartless polish was the best of it; and not a little of it was 
Marriage a la Mode. Chesterfield, with his soulless culture, his 
court graces, and his fashionable immoralities, was about the 
highest type of an English gentleman ; but the Wilkeses, Pot- 
ters, and Sandwiches, whose mania for vice culminated in the 
Hell-fire Club, were more numerous than the Chesterfields. Among 
the country squires, for one Allworthy or Sir Roger de Covcrley 
there were many Westerns. Among the common people religion 
was almost extinct, and assuredly no new morality or sentiment, 
such as Positivists now promise, had taken its place. Sometimes 
the rustic thought for himself, and scepticism took formal posses- 
sion of his mind ; but, as we see from one of Cowper's letters, it was a 
coarse scepticism which desired to be buried with its hounds. Ignor- 
ance and brutality reigned in the cottage. Drunkenness reigned in 
palace and cottage alike. Gambling, cock-fighting, and bull-fighting 
were the amusements of the people. Political life, which, if it had 
been pure and vigorous, might have made up-for the absence of spir- 
itual influences, was corrupt from the top of the scale to the bottom : 
its effect on national character is pourtrayed in Hogarth's Election. 
That property had its duties as well as its rights, nobody had yet 
ventured to say or think. The duty of a gentleman towards his 
own class was to pay his debts of honour and to fight a duel when- 
ever he was challenged by one of his own order ; towards the lower 
class his duty was none. Though the forms of government were 
elective, and Cowper gives us a description of the candidate at 
election-time obsequiously soliciting votes, society was intensely 
aristocratic, and each rank was divided from that below it bv a 
sharp line which precluded brotherhood or sympathy. Says the 
Duchess of Buckingham to Lady Huntingdon, who had asked her 
to come and hear Whitefield, " I thank your ladyship for the in- 
formation concerning the Methodist preachers ; their doctrines are 
most repulsive, and strongly tinctured with disrespect towards their 
superiors, in perpetually endeavouring to level all ranks and do 
away with all distinctions. It is monstrous to be told you have a 
heart as sinfulas the common wretches that crawl on the earth. 
This is highly offensive and insulting ; and I cannot but wonder 
that your ladyship should relish any sentiments so much at vari- 
ance with high rank and good breeding. I shall be most happv to 
come and hear your favourite preacher." Her Grace's sentiments 
towards the common wretches that crawl on the earth were shared, 
we may be sure, by her Grace's waiting-maid. Of humanity there 
was as little as there was of religion. It was the age of the criminal 
law which hanged men for petty thefts, of life-long imprisonment 
for debt., of the stocks and the pillory, of a Temple Bar garnished 
with the heads of traitors, of the unreformed prison system, of the 



1 o CO WPER. 

press-gang, of unrestrained tyranny and savagery at public schools. 
That the slave-trade was iniquitous hardly any one suspected ; even 
men who deemed themselves religious took part in it without scru- 
ple. But a change was at hand, and a still mightier change was in 
prospect. At the time of Cowper's birth, John Wesley was twenty- 
eight, and Whitefield was seventeen. With them the revival of 
religion was at hand. Johnson, the moral reformer, was twenty- 
two. Howard was born, and in less than a generation Wilberforce 
was to come. 

When Cowper was six years old his mother died ; and seldolT^^ 
has a child, even such a child, lost more, even in a mother. Fifty 
years after her death he still thinks of her, he says, with love and 
tenderness every day. Late in his life his cousin, Mrs. Anne 
Bodham, recalled herself to his remembrance by sending him his 
mother's picture. " Every creature," he writes, " that has any 
affinity to my mother is dear to me, and you, the daughter of her 
brother, are but one remove distant from her ; I love you there' 
fore, and love you much, both for her sake and for your own. The 
world could not have furnished you with a present so acceptable to 
me as tiie picture which you have so kindly sent me. I received it 
the night before last, and received it with a trepidation of nerves 
and spirits somewhat akin to what I should have felt had its dear 
original presented herself to my embraces. I kissed it, and hung 
it where it is the last object which I see at night, and the first on 
which I open my eyes in the morning. She died when I com- 
pleted my sixth year ; yet I remember her well, and am an ocular 
witness of the great fidelity of the copy. I remember, too, a mul- 
titude of the maternal tendernesses which I received from her, and 
which have endeared her memory to me beyond expression. There 
is in me, I believe, more of the Donne than of the Cowper, and 
though I love all of both names, and have a thousand reasons to 
love those of my own name, yet I feel the bond of nature draw me 
vehemently to your side." As Cowper never married, there was 
nothing to take the place in his heart which had been left vacant by 
Ills mother. 

" My mother ! when T learn'd that thou wast dead, 
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed."* 
Hover'd thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, 
Wretch even then, life's journev just begun? 
Perhaps thou gav'st me, though unfelt, a kiss; 
Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss — 
Ah, that.maternal smile! — it answers — Yes. 
I heard the bell toll'd on thv burial day, 
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow awav, 
And, turning from my nursery window, drew 
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu! 
But was it such ? — It was. — Where thou art gone 
Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. 
May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, 
The parting word shall pass my lips no more ! 



COUTER. II 

Th}' maideVif., grieved ib.ciriSilvcs at my concern, 

Oft gave me jiromisc of tliV c[uick return. 

What ardently I wish'd, 1 long believed, 

And disappointed still, was still deceived; 

By expectation every day beguiled, 

Dupe of to-morrow even from a child. 

Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went, 

Till, all my stock of infant sorrows spent, 

I learn'd at last submission to my lot, 

But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot." 

In the years that followed no doubt he remembered her too well. 
At six years of age this little mass of timid and quivering sensibil- 
ity was, in accorcfance with the cruel custom of the time, sent to a 
large boarding-school. The change from home to a boarding-school 
is bad enough now ; it was much worse in those days. 

" I had hardships," says Cowper, "of various kinds to conflict 
with, which I felt more sensibly in proportion to the tenderness with 
which I had been treated at home. But my chief affliction con- 
sisted in my being singled out from all the other boys by a lad of 
about fifteen years of age as a proper object upon whom he might 
let loose the cruelty of his temper. I choose to conceal a particular 
recital of the many acts of barbarity with which he made it his busi- 
ness continually to persecute me. It will be sufificient to say that 
his savage treatment of me impressed such a dread of his figure 
upon my mind, that I well remember being afraid to lift my eyes 
upon him higher than to his knees, and that I knew him better by 
his shoe-buckles than by any other part of his dress. May the Lord 
pardon him, and may we meet in glory ! " Cowper charges him- 
self, it may be in the exaggerated style of a self-accusing saint, with 
having become at school an adept in the art of lying. Southey says 
this must be a mistake, since at English public schools boys do not 
learn to lie. But the mistake is on Southey's part; bullying, such 
as this child endured, while it makes the strong boys tyrants, makes 
the weak boys cowards, and teaches them to defend themselves by 
deceit, the fist of the weak. The recollection of this boarding- 
school mainly it was that at a later day inspired the plea for a 
home education in Tirocinium. 

" Then why resign into a stranger's hand 
A task as much within your own command, 
That God and nature, and your interest too, 
Seem with one voice to delegate to you .-* 
Whv hire a lodging in a house unknown 

For one whose tenderest thoughts all hover round your own? 
Thi"^ second weaning, needless as it is, 
How does it lacerate both vour heart and his ! 
The indented stick that loses dav bv day 
Notch after notch, till all are smooth'd away, 
Bears witness long ere his dismission come, 
With what intense desire he wants his home. 
But though the jovs he hopes beneath your roof 
Bid fair enough to answer in the proof, 



13 COWPER. 

Har;rJc;-s, and safe, ar.d natural as they are, 
A disapi'.ointuient waits him even there : 
Arrived, he feels ?:^ unexpected change, 
He blushes, han;^s his head, is shy and strange. 
No longer takes, as once, with fearless ease, 
His favourite stand between his father's knees. 
But seeks the corner of some distant seat, 
And eyes the door, and watches a retreat, 
And, least familiar where he should be most, 
Feels all his happiest privileges lost. 
Alas, poor l:)oy ! — the natural effect 
Of love by absence chill' d into respect." 

From the boarding-school, the boy, his eyes being liable to in- 
flammation, was sent to live with an oculist, in wdiose house he 
spent two years, enjoying at all events a respite from the sufferings 
and the evils of the boarding-school. He was then sent to West- 
minster School, at that time in its glory. That Westminster in 
those da3\s must have been a scene not merely of hardship, but of 
cruel suffering and degradation to the younger and weaker boys, 
has been proved by the researches of the Public Schools Commis- 
sion. There was an established system and a regular vocabulary 
of bullying. Yet Cowper seems not to have been so unhappy there 
as at the private schocl ; he speaks of himself as having excelled 
at cricket and football ; and excellence in cricket and football at a 
public school generally carries with it, besides health and enjoy- 
ment, not merely immunity from bullying, but high social consider- 
tion. With all Cowper's delicacy and sensitiveness, he must have 
had a certain fund of physical strength, or he could hardly have 
borne the literary labour of his later years, especially as he was 
subject to the medical treatment of a worse than empirical era. At 
one time he says, while he was at Westminster, his spirits were so 
buoyant that he fancied he should never die, till a skull thrown 
out before him by a grave-digger as he was passing through St. 
Margaret's churchyard in the night recalled him to a sense of his 
mortality. 

The instruction at a public school in those days was exclusively 
classical. Cowper was under Vincent Bourne, his portrait of whom 
is in some respects a picture not only of its immediate subject, but 
of the school-master of the last century. " I love the memory of 
Vinny Bourne. I think him a better Latin poet than Tibullus, Pro- 
pertius, Ausonius, or any of the writers in his way, except Ovid, 
and not at all inferior to him. I love him too with a love of par- 
tiality, because he was usher of the fifth form at Westminster when 
I passed through it. He was so good-natured and so indolent that 
T lost more than I got by him, for he made me as idle as himself. 
He was such a slov^en, as if he had trusted to his genius as a cloak 
for everything that coidd disgust you in his person ; and indeed in 

his writings he has almost made amends for all I remember 

seeing the Duke of Richmond set fire to his greasy locks, and box 
his ears to put it out again." Cowper learned, if not to write Latin 



COWPER. 13 

verses as well as Vinny Bourne himself, to write them very well, as 
his Latin versions of some of his own short poems bear witness. 
Not only so, but he evidently became a good classical scholar, as 
classical scholarship was in those days, and acquired the literary 
form of which the classics are the best school. Out of school 
hours he studied independently, as clever boys under the unexact- 
ing rule of the old public schools often did, and read through the 
whole of the //^Vzc/and Odyssey with a friend. He also, probably, 
picked up at Westminster much of tiie little knowledge of the world 
which he ever possessed. Among his school-fellows was Warren 
Hastings, in whose guilt as proconsul he afterwards, for the sake 
of Auld Lang Syne, refused to believe, and Impey, whose character 
has had the ill-fortune to be required as the shade in Macaulay's 
fancy picture of Hastings. 

On leaving Westminster, Cowper, at eighteen, went to live with 
Mr. Chapman, an attorney, to whom he was articled, being destined 
for the Law. He chose that profession, he says, not of his own 
accord, but to gratify an indulgent father, who may have been led 
into the error by a recollection of the legal honours of the family, 
as well as by the "^ silver pence " which his promising son had won 
by his Latin verses at Westminster School. The youth duly slept 
at the attorney's house in Ely Place. His days were spent in "gig- 
gling and making giggle " with his cousins, Theodora and Har- 
riet, the daughters of Ashley Cowper, in the neighbouring South- 
ampton Row. Ashley Cowper was a very little man, in a white 
hat lined with yellow, and his nephew used to say that he would 
one day be picked by mistake for a mushroom. His fellow-clerk 
in the office, and his accomplice in giggling and making giggle, 
was one strangely mated with him ; the strong, aspiring and un- 
scrupulous Thurlow, who, though fond of pleasure, was at the 
same time preparing himself to push his way to wealth and power. 
Cowper felt that Thurlow would reach the summit of ambition 
while he would himself remain below, and made his friend prom- 
ise when he was Chancellor to give him something. When 
Thurlow was Chancellor, he gave Cowper his advice on translating 
Homer. 

At the end of his three )^ears with the attorney, Cowper took 
chambers in the Middle, from which he afterwards removed to the 
Inner Temple. The Temple is now a pile of law offices. In those 
days it was still a Society. One of Cowper's set says of it: 
"The Temple is the barrier that divides the City and Suburbs; 
and the gentlemen who reside there seem influenced by the situa- 
tion of the place they inhabit. Templars are in general a kind 
of citizen courtiers. They aim at the air and the mien of the draw- 
ing-room, but the holy-day smoothness of a 'prentice, heightened 
with some additional touches of the rake or coxcomb, betrays it- 
self in everything they do. The Temple, however, is stocked with 
its peculiar beaux, wits, poets, critics, and every character in the 
gay world ; and it is a thousand pities that so pretty a societv should 
be disgraced with a few dull fellows, who can submit to puzzle them- 



14 COWPER. 

selves with cases and reports, and have not taste enough to follow 
tile genteel method of studying the law." Cowper, at all events, 
studied law by the genteel method ; he read it almost as httle in 
the Temple as he had in the attorney's office, though in due course 
of time he was formally called to the Bar, and even managed in 
some way to acquire a reputation which, when he had entirely 
given up the profession, brought him a curious offer of a readership 
at Lyons Inn. His time was given to literature, and he became a 
member of a little circle of men of letters and journalists which had 
its social centre in the Nonsense Club, consisting of seven West- 
minster men who dined together every Thursday. In the set were 
Bonnell Thornton and Colman, twin wits ; fellow-writers of the pe- 
riodical essays which were the rage in that day; joint proprietors 
of the St. Ja7nes''s Chronicle j contributors both of them to the 
Connoisseur ; and translators, Colman of Terence, Bonnell Thorn- 
ton of Plautus, Colman being a dramatist besides. In the set was 
Lloyd, another wit and essayist and a poet, with a character not of 
the best. On the edge of the set, but apparently not in it, was 
Churchill, who was then running a course which to many seemed 
meteoric, and of whose verse, sometimes strong but always tur- 
bid, Cowper conceived and retained an extravagant admiration. 
Churchill was a link to Wilkes ; Hogarth, too, was an ally of Col- 
man, and helped him in his exhibition of Signs. The set was strict- 
ly confined to Westminsters. Gray and Mason, being Etonians, 
were objects of its literary hostility, and butts of its satire. It is 
needless to say much about these literary companions of Cowper's 
youth; his intercourse with tliem was totally broken off ; and be- 
fore he himself became a poet its effects had been obliterated by 
madness, entire change of mind, and the lapse of twenty years. If 
a trace remained, it was in his admiration of Churchill's verses, 
and in the general results of literary society, and of early practice 
in composition. Cowper contributed to the Connoisser and the 
St. James's Chronicle. His papers in the Connoisseur have been 
preserved ; they are mainly imitations of the lighter papers of the 
Spectator hy a student who affects the man of the world. He also 
dallied with poetry, writing verses to "Delia," and an epistle to 
Lloyd. He had translated an elegy of Tibullus when he was four- 
teen, and at Westminster he had written an imitation of Phillips's 
Splendid Shilling, which, Southey says, shows his manner formed. 
He helped his Cambridge brother, John Cowper, in a translation 
of the Heriade. He kept up his classics, especially his Homer. 
In his letters there are proofs of his familiarity with Rousseau. 
Two or three ballads which he wrote are lost, but he says they were 
popular, and we may believe him. Probably they were patriotic. 
' When poor Bob White," he says, " brought in the news of Bos- 
cawen's success off the Coast of Portugal, how did I leap for joy ! 
When Hawke demohshed Conflans, I was still more transported. 
But nothing could express my rapture when Wolfe made the con- 
quest of Quebec." 

The " Delia " to whom Cowper wrote verses was his cousin 



COWPER. 



15 



Theodora, with whom he had an unfortunate love affair. Her 
father, Ashley Cowper, forbade their marriage, nominally on the 
ground of consanguinity ; really, as Southey thinks, because he saw 
Cowper's unfitness for business, and inability to maintain a wife. 
Cowper felt the disappointment deeply at the time, as well he might 
do if Theodora resembled her sister, Lady Hesketh. Theodora 
remained unmarried, and, as we shall see, did not forget her lover. 
His letters she preserved till her death in extreme old age. 

In 1756 Cowper's father died. There does not seem to have 
been much intercourse between them, nor does the son in after- 
years speak with any deep feeling of his loss : possibly his com- 
plaint in Tirociniiini of the effect of boarding-schools, in estrang- 
ing children from their parents, may have had some reference to 
his own case. His local affections, however, were very strong, and 
he felt with unusual keenness the final parting from his old home, 
and the pang of thinking that strangers usurp our dwelling and the 
familiar places will know us no more. 

" Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more, 
Children not thine have trod my nursery floor; 
And where the gardener Robin, day by day, 
Drew me to school along the public way, 
Delighted with my bauble coach, and wrapp'd 
In scarlet mantle warm and velvet capp'd. 
'Tis now become a history little known. 
That once we call'd the pastoral house our own." 

Before the rector's death, it seems, his pen had hardly realised 
the cruel frailty of the tenure by which a home in a parsonage is 
held. Of the family of Burkhampstead Rectory there was now 
left besides himself only his brother John Cowper^ Fellow of Caius 
College, Cambridge, whose birth had cost their mother's life. 

When Cowper was thirty-two, and still living in the Temple, 
came the sad and decisive crisis of his life. He went mad, and 
attempted suicide. What was the source of his madness .? There 
is a vague tradition that it arose from licentiousness, which, no 
doubt, is sometimes the cause of insanity. But in Cowper's case 
there is no proof of anything of the kind : his confessions, after his 
conversion, of his own past sinfulness point to nothing worse than 
^Ceneral ungodliness and occasional excess in wine ; and the tradi- 
tion derives a colour of probability only from the loose lives of one 
or two of the wits and Bohemians with whom he had lived. His 
virtuous love of Theodora was scarcely compatible with low and 
gross amours. Generally, his madness is said to have been 
religious, and the blame is laid on the same foe to human weal as 
that of the sacrifice of Iphigenia. But when he first went mad, his 
conversion to Evangelicism had not taken place ; he had not led a 
particularly religious life, nor been greatly given to religious prac- 
tices, though as a clergyman's son he naturally believed^in religion, 
had at times felt religious emotions, and when he found his heart 
sinking had tried devotional bocks and prayers. The truth is, his 



1 6 COWPE!^. 

malady was simple hypochondria, having its source in delicacy of 
constitution and weakness of digestion, combined with the influence 
of melancholy surroundings. It had begun to attack him soon 
after his settlement in his lonely chambers in the Temple, when his 
pursuits and associations, as we have seen, were far from Evangel- 
ical. When its crisis arrived, he was living by himself without any 
society of the kind that suited him (for the excitement of the Non- 
sense Club was sure to be followed by reaction) ; he had lost his 
love, his father, his home, and, as it happened, also a dear friend ; his 
little patrimony was fast dwindling away; he must have despaired 
of success in his profession ; and his outlook was altogether dark. 
It yielded to the remedies to which hypochondria usually yields — 
air, exercise, sunshine, cheerful society, congenial occupation. It 
came with January and went with May. Its gathering gloom was 
dispelled for a time by a stroll in fine weather on the hills above 
Southampton Water, and Cowper said that he was never unhappy 
for a whole day in the company of Lady Hesketh. When he had 
become a Methodist, his hypochondria took a religious form, but so 
did his recovery from hypochondria ; both must be set down to the 
account of his faith, or neither. This double aspect of the matter 
will plainly appear further on. A votary of wealth, when his brain 
gives way' under disease or age, fancies that he js a beggar. A 
Methodist, when his brain gives way under the same influences, 
fancies that he is forsaken of God. In both cases the root of the 
malady is physical. 

In the lines which Cowper sent on his disappointment to Theo- 
dora's sister, and which record the sources of his despondency, there 
is not a touch of religious despair, or of anything connected with 
religion. The catastrophe was brought on by an incident with 
which religion had nothing to do. The office of clerk of the Jour- 
nals in the House of Lords fell vacant, and was in the gift of Cow- 
per's kinsman, Major Cowper, as patentee. Cowper received the 
nomination. He had longed for the office sinfully, as he afterwards 
fancied ; it would exactlyhave suited him, and made him comfort- 
able for hfe. But his mind had by this time succumbed to his 
malady. His fancy conjured up visions of opposition to the appoint- 
ment in the House of Lords ; of hostility in the office where he 
had to study the Journals ; of the terrors of an examination to be 
undergone before the frowning peers. After hopelessly poring over 
the Journals for some months he became quite mad, and his mad- 
ness took a suicidal form. He has told with unsparing exactness 
the story of his attempts to kill himself. In his youth his father 
had unwisely given him a treatise in favour of suicide to read, and 
when he argued against it, had listened to his reasonings in a si- 
lence which he construed as sympathy with the writer, though it 
seems to have been only unwillingness to think too badly of the 
state of a departed friend. This now recurred to his mind, and 
talk with casual companions in taverns and chop-houses was enough 
in his present condition to confirm him in his belief that self-de- 
struction was lawful. Evidently he was perfectly insane, for he 



CO VVPER. I J 

could not take up a newspaper without reading in it a fancied libel 
on himself. First he bought laudanum, and had gone out into the 
fields with the intention of swallowing it, when the love of life sug- 
gested another way of escaping the dreadful ordeal. He might sell 
all he had, .fly to France, change his religion, and bury himself in a 
monastery. He went home to pack up ; but while he was looking 
over his portmanteau, his mood changed, and he again resolved on 
self-destruction. Taking a coach, he ordered the coachman to drive 
to the Tower Wharf, intending to throw himself into the river. 
But the love of life once more interposed, under the guise of a low 
tide and a porter seated on the quay. Again in the coach, and 
afterwards in his chambers, he tried to swallow the laudanum ; but 
his hand was paralysed by "the convincing Spirit," aided by sea- 
sonable interruptions from the presence of his laundress and her 
husband, and at length he threw the laudanum away. On the night 
before the day appointed for the examination before the Lords, he 
lay some time with the point of his penknife pressed against his 
heart, but without courage to drive it home. Lastly, he tried to 
hang himself ; and on this occasion he seems to have been saved 
notW the love of life, or by want of resolution, but by mere acci- 
dent." He had become insensible, when the garter by which he was 
suspended broke, and his fall brought in the laundress, who sup- 
posed him to be in a fit. He sent her to a friend, to whom he re- 
lated all that had passed, and despatched him to his kinsman. His 
kinsman arrived, listened widi horror to the story, made more vivid 
by the sight of the broken garter, saw at once that all thought of 
the appointment was at end, and carried away the instrument of 
nomination. Let those whom despondency assails read this passage 
of Covvper's life, and remember that he lived to write John Gilpin 
and The Task. 

Cowper tells us that "to this moment he had felt no concern of 
a spiritual kind ; " that " ignorant of original sin, insensible of the 
guilt of actual transgression, he understood neither the Law nor 
the Gospel; the condemning nature of the one, nor the restoring 
mercies of the other." But after attempting suicide he was seized, 
as he well might be, with religious horrors. Now it was that he 
began to ask himself whether he had been guilty of the unpardon- 
able sin, and was presently persuaded that he had, tliough it would 
be vain to inquire what he imagined the unpardonable sin to be. Li 
this mood, he fancied that if there was any balm for him in Gilead, 
it would be found in the ministrations of his friend Martin jMadan, 
an Evangelical clergyman of high repute, whom he had been wont 
to regard as an entluisiast. His Cambridge brother, John, the trans- 
lator of the Henriade, seems to have had some philosophic doubts 
as to the efiicacy of the proposed remedy, but, like a philosopher, 
he consented to' the experiment. Mr. Madan came and ministered, 
but in that distempered soul his balm turned to poison ; his relig- 
ious conversations only fed the horrible illusion. A set of Eng- 
lish Sapphics, written by Cowper at this time, and expressing his 
despair, were unfortunately preserved ; they are a ghastly play of 



1 8 COWPER. 

the poetic faculty in a mind utterly deprived of self-control, and 
amidst the horrors of inrushing madness. Diabolical they might 
be termed more truly than religious. 

There was nothing for it but a madhouse. The sufferer was 
consigned to the private asylum of Dr. Cotton, at St. Alban's. An 
ill-chosen physician Dr. Cotton would have been, if the malady had 
really had its source in religion ; for he was himself a pious man, a 
writer of hymns, and was in the habit of holding religious inter- 
course with his patients. Cowper, after his recovery, speaks of 
that intercourse with the keenest pleasure and gratitude ; so that, 
in the opinion of the two persons best qualified to judge, religion in 
this case was not the bane. Cowper has given us a full account of his 
recovery. It was brought about, as we can plainly see, by medical 
treatment wisely applied ; but it came in the form of a burst of re- 
ligious faith and hope. He rises one morning feeling better ; grows 
cheerful over his breakfast, takes up the Bible, which in his fits of 
madness he always threw aside, and turns to a verse in the Epistle 
to the Romans. " Immediately I received strength to believe, and 
the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw 
the sufficiency of the atonement He had made, my pardon in His 
blood, and the fulness and completeness of His justification. In a 
moment I believed and received the Gospel." Cotton at first mis- 
trusted the sudden change ; but he was at length satisfied, pro- 
nounced his patient cured, and discharged him from the asylum, 
after a detention of eighteen months. Cowper hymned his deliver- 
ance in The Happy Change, as in the hideous Sapphics he had 
given religious utterance to his despair. 

"The soul, a dreary province once 
Of Satan's dark domain, 
Feels a new empire form'd within. 
And owns a heavenly reign. 

"The glorious orb whose golden beams 
The fruitful year control, 
Since first obedient to Thy word. 
He started from the goal, 

" Has cheer'd the nations with the joys 
His orient rays impart ; 
But, Jesus, 'tis Thy light alone 
Can shine upon the heart." 

Once for all, the reader of Cowper's life must make up his mind 
to acquiesce in religious forms of expression. If he does not sym- 
pathise with them, he will recognise them as phenomena of opin- 
ion, and bear them hke a philosopher. He can easily translate 
them into the language of psychology, or even of physiology, if he 
thinks fit. 



COWPER. - 19 



CHAPTER II. 

AT HUNTINGDON — THE UNWINS. 

The storm was over; but it had swept away a great part of 
Cowper's scanty fortune, and almost all his friends. At thirty-five 
he was stranded and desolate. He was obHged to resign a Com- 
missionership of Bankruptcy which he held, and httle seems to 
have remained to him but the rent of his chambers m the lemple. 
A return to his profession was, of course, out of the question. His 
relations, however, combined to make up a little income for him, 
thouo-h from a hope of his family, he had become a melancholy di»- 
appomtment ; even the Major contributing, in spite of the rather 
tryino- incident of the nomination. His brother was kind, and did 
a brother's duty, but there does not seem to have been much sym- 
pathy between them ; John Cowper did not become a convert to 
Evan<^elical doctrine till he was near his end, and he was incapable 
of sharing William's spiritual emotions. Of his briUiant compan- 
ions, the Bonnell Thorntons and the Colmans, the quondam mem- 
bers' of the Nonsense Club, he heard no more, till he had himself 
become famous. But he still had a staunch friend in a less bril- 
liant member of the club, Joseph Hill, the lawyer, evidently a man 
who united strong sense and depth of character with literary tastes 
and love of fun, and who was throughout Cowper's life his Mentor 
in matters of business, with regard to which he was himself a 
child. He had brought with him from the asylum at St. Alban's 
the servant who had attended him there, and who had been drawn 
by the singular talisman of personal attraction which partly made 
up to this frail and helpless being for his entire lack of force. He 
had also brought from the- same place an outcast boy whose case 
had excited his interest, and for whom he afterwards provided by 
putting him to a trade. The maintenance of these two retainers 
was expensive, and led to grumblinc" amons: the subscribers to the 
family subsidy, the Maior especially threatening to withdraw^ hi? 
contribution. While the matter was' in aoiitation, Cowper received 
an anonymous letter couched in the kindest terms, bidding^ him not 
distress' himself, for that whatever deduction from his income 
mi2:ht be made, the loss would be supplied by one who loved him 
ten'derly and approved his conduct. In a letter to Lady Hesketh, 
he says that he wishes he knew who dictated this letter, and that 
he had seen not long before a style excessively like it. He can 
scarcely have failed to guess that 'it came from Theodora. 

It is due to Cowper to sav that he accepts the assistance of his 
relatives, and all acts of kindness done to him, with sweet apd be^ 



20 COWPER, . 

coming thankfulness ; and that whatever dark fancies he may have 
had about his religious state^ when the evil spirit was upon him, he 
always speaks w^ith contentment and cheerfulness of his earthly 
lot. Nothing splenetic, no element of suspicious and irritable self- 
love entered mto the composition of his character. 

On his release from the asylum he was taken in hand by his 
brother John, who first tried to find lodgings for him at or near 
Cambridge, and, failing in this, placed him at Huntingdon, within 
a long ride, so that William becoming a horseman for the purpose, 
the brothers could meet once a week. Huntingdon was a quiet 
little town with less than two thousand inhabitants, in a dull coun- 
try, the best part of which was the Ouse, especially to Cowper, who 
was fond of bathing. Life there, as in other English country towns 
in those days, and, indeed, till railroads made people everywhere 
too restless and migratory for companionship, or even for acquaint- 
ance, was sociable in an unrefined way. There were assemblies, 
dances, races, card-parties, and a bowhng-green, at which the little 
world met and enjoyed itself. From these the new convert, in his 
spiritual ecstasy, of course turned away as mere modes of murder- 
ing time. Three families received him with civility, two of them 
with cordiality ; but the chief acquaintances he made were with 
"odd scrambling fellows like himself;" an eccentric water-drinker 
and vegetarian who was to be met by early risers and walkers every 
.morning at six o'clock by his favourite spring; a char-parson, of 
the class common in those days of sinecurism and non-residence, 
who walked sixteen miles every Sunday to serve two churches, be- 
sides reading daily prayers at Huntingdon, and who regaled his 
friend with ale brewed by his own hands. In his attached servant 
the recluse boasted that he had a friend ; a friend he might have, 
but hardly a companion. 

For the first days, and even weeks, however, Huntingdon seemed 
a paradise. The heart of its new inhabitant was full of the un- 
speakable happiness that comes with calm after storm, with health 
after the most terrible of maladies, with repose after the burning 
fever of the brain. When first he went to church, he was in a 
spiritual ecstasy ; it was with difficulty that he restrained his emo- 
tions ; though his voice was silent,- being stopped by the intensity 
of his feelin2:s, his heart within him sang for joy ; and when the 
Gospel for the dav was read, the sound of it was more than he 
could well bear, this brightness of his mind communicated itself 
to all the objects round him— to the sluggish waters of the Ouse, to 
dull, fenny Huntinirdon, and to its commonplace inhabitants. 

For about three months his cheerfulness lasted, and with the 
help of books, and his rides to meet his brother, he got on pretty 
well ; but then " the communion which he had so long been^ able 
to maintain with the Lord v/as suddenly interrupted." This is his 
theolo2:ical version of the case : the rationalistic version immedi- 
ately follows : " I began to dislike my sohtary situation, and to fear 
I should never be able to weather out the winter in so lonely a 
dwelling." No man could be less fitted to bear a lonely life ; per 



COWPER. 21 

*.ister,ce 'n llie attempt would soon have brought back his madness. 
He was longing for a home ; and a home was at hand to receive 
him. It was not, perhaps, one of the happiest kind; but the in- 
fiuence which detracted from its advantages was the one which 
»-endered it hospitable to the wanderer. If Christian piety was 
carried to a morbid excess beneath its roof. Christian charity 
opened Us door. 

The rehgious revival was now in full career, with Wesley fof 
its chief apostle, organiser, and dictator ; Whitefield for its great 
preacher; Fletcher of Madeley for its typical saint ; Lady Hunting- 
don for its patroness among the aristocracy, and the chief of its 
"devout women." From the pulpit, but still more from the stand 
of the field-preacher and through a well-trained army of social 
propagandists, it was assailing the scepticism, the coldness, the 
frivolity, the vices of the age. English society was deeply stirred ; 
multitudes were converted, while among those who were not con- 
verted violent and sometimes cruel antagonism was aroused. The 
party had two wings — the Evangelicals, people of the wealthier 
class or clergymen of the Church of England, who remained within 
the Establishm.ent ; and the Methodists, people of the lower 
middle class or peasants, the personal converts and followers of 
Wesley and Whitefield, who, like their leaders, without a positive 
secession, soon found themselves organising a separate spiritual 
life in the freedom of Dissent. In the early stages of the move- 
ment the Evangelicals were to be counted at most by hundreds, 
the Methodists by hundreds of thousands. So far as the masses 
were concerned, it was, in fact, a preaching of Christianity anew. 
There was a cross division of the party into the Calvinists and 
those whom the Calvinists called Arminians ; Wesley belonging 
to the latter section, while the most pronounced and vehement of 
the Calvinists was " the fierce Toplady." As a rule, the darker 
and sterner element, that which delighted in religious terrors 
and threatenings was Calvinist, the milder and gentler, that 
which preached a gospel of love and hope continued to .look up to 
Wesley, and to bear with him the reproacli of being .Arminian. 

It is needless to enter into a minute description of Evangelicism 
and Methodism; they are not things of the past. If Evangelicism 
has novv^ been reduced to a narrow domain by the advancing forces 
of Ritualism on one side, and of Rationalism on the other, Method- 
ism is still the great Protestant Church, especially beyond the 
Atlantic. The spiritual fire which they have kindled, the character 
which they have produced, the inoral reforms which they have 
wrought, the works of charity and pliilanthropy to which they have 
given birth, are matters not only of recent memory, but of present 
experience. Like the great Protestant revivals which had preceded 
them in England, like the Moravian revival on the Continent, to 
which they were closely related, tliev sou<rht to bring the soul into 
direct communion with its Maker, rejecting the intervention of a 
priesthood or a sacramental system. Unlike the jDrevious revivals 
in England, they warred not against the rulers of the Church or 



2 2 COWFER. 

State, but only against vice or irreligion. Consequently, in the 
characters which they produced, as compared with those produced 
by Wycliffism, by the Reformation, and notably by Puritanism, 
there was less of force and the grandeur connected with it, more of 
gentleness, mysticism, and religious love. Even Quietism, oi' 
something like it, prevailed, especially among the Evangelicals, 
who were not like the Methodists, engaged in framing a new 
organisation or in wrestling with the barbarous vices of the lower 
order. No movement of the kind has ever been exempt from 
drawbacks and follies, from extravagance, exaggeration, breaches 
of good taste in religious matters, unctuousness, and cant — from 
chimerical attempts to get rid of the flesh and live an angelic life 
on earth — from delusions about special providences and miracles 
— from a tendency to overvalue doctrine and undervalue duty — 
from arrogant assumption of spiritual authority by leaders and 
preachers — from the self-righteousness which fancies itself the 
object of a divine election, and looks out with a sort of religious 
complacency from the Ark of Salvation in which it fancies itself 
securely placed, upon the drowning of an unregenerate world. 
Still, it will hardly be doubted that in the effects produced by 
Evangelicism and Methodism the good has outweighed the evil. 
Had Jansenism prospered as well, France might have had more 
of reform and less of revolution. The poet of the movement will 
not be condemned on account of his connexion with it, any more 
than Milton is condemned on account of his connexion with 
Puritanism, provided it be found that he also served art well. 

Cowper, as we have seen, was already converted. In a letter 
written at this time to Lady Hesketh, he speaks of himself with 
great humility "as a convert made in Bedlam, who is more likely 
to be a stumbling-block to others than to advance their faith," 
though he adds, with reason enough, "that he who can ascribe an 
amendment of life and manners, and a reformation of the heart 
itself, to madness, is guilty of an absurdity that in '-iny other case 
would fasten the imputation of madness upon 1 ;;nse!f." It is 
hence to be presumed that he traced his conversion to his spiritual 
intercourse with the Evangelical physician of St. Alban's, though 
the seed sown by Martin Madan may, perhaps, also have sprung 
up in his heart when the more propitious season arrived. However 
that may have been, the two great factors of Cowper's life were the 
malady which consigned him to poetic seclusion and the conversion 
to Evangelicism, which gave him his inspiration and his theme. 

At Huntingdon dwelt the Rev. William Unwin, a clergyman, 
taking pupils, his wife, much younger than himself, and their son 
and daughter. It was a typical family of the Revival. Old Mr. 
Unwin is described by Cowper as a Parson Adams, The son, 
William Unwin, was preparing for holy orders. He w^as a man of 
some mark, and received tokens of intellectual respect from Paley, 
though he is best known as the friend to whom many of Cowper's 
letters are addressed. He it was who, struck by the appearance of 
the stranger, sought an opportunity of making his acquaintance 



COWPER. 



23 



He found one, after morning church, when Cowper was taking his 
solitary walk beneath the trees. Under the influence of religious 
sympathy the acquaintance quickly ripened into friendship ; Cowper 
at once became one of the Unvvin circle, and soon afterward, a 
vacancy being made by the departure of one of the pupils, he be- 
came a boarder in the house. This position he had passionately 
desired on religious grounds ; but in truth, he might well have 
desired it on economical grounds also, for he had begun to ex- 
perience the difficulty and expensiveness, as well as the loneliness, 
of bachelor housekeeping, and financial deficit was evidently before 
him. To Mrs. Unwin he was from the first strongly drawn. " 1 
met Mrs. Unwin in the street," he says, "and went home with her. 
She and I walked together near two hours in the garden, and had 
a conversation which did me more good than I should have received 
from an audience with the first prince in Europe. That woman is 
a blessing to me, and I never see her without being the better for 
her company." Mrs. Unwin's character is written in her portrait 
with its prim but pleasant features ; a Puritan and a precisian she 
was ; but she was not morose or sour, and she had a boundles.s 
capacity for affection. Lady Hesketh, a woman of the world, and 
a good judge in every respect, says of her at a later period, when 
she had passed w-ith Cow^per through many sad and trying years : 
" She is very far from grave ; on the contrary, she is cheerful and 
gay, and laughs de bon ccenr upon the smallest provocation. Amidst 
all the little puritanical words which fall from her de temps eii teinps^ 
she seems to have by nature a quiet fund of gaiety ; great indeed 
must it have been, not to have been wholly overcome by the close 
confinement in which she has lived, and the anxiety she must have 
undergone for one whom she certainly loves as well as one human 
being can love another. I will not say she idolizes him, because 
that she would think wrong; but she certainly seems to possess the 
truest regard and affection for this excellent creature, and, as I 
said before, has in the most literal sense of those words, no will or 
shadow of inclination but what is his. My account of Mrs. Unwin 
may seem, perhaps, to you, on comparing my letters, contradictory ; 
but when you consider that I began to write at the first moment 
that I saw her, you will not wonder. Her character develops itself 
by degrees ; and though I might lead you to suppose her grave and 
melancholy, she is not so by any means. When she speaks upon 
grave subjects, she does express herself with a puritanical tone, 
and in puritanical expressions, but on all subjects she seems to 
have a great disposition to cheerfulness and mirth ; and, indeed, 
had she not, she could not have gone through all she has. I must 
say, too, that she seems to be very well read in the English poets, 
as appears by several little quotations, which she makes from time to 
time, and has a true taste for what is excellent in that way." 

When Cowper became an author he paid the highest respect to 
Mrs. Unwin as an instinctive critic, and called her his Lord Cham- 
berlain, whose approbation was his sufficient licence for publication. 

Life in the Unwin family is thus described hv the new inmate : 



24 COWPER. 

— " As to amusements — I mean what the world calls such — we have 
none. The place, indeed, swarms with them ; and cards and dan- 
cing are the professed business of almost all the ^^;///^ inhabitants 
of Huntingdon. We refuse to take part in them, or to be access- 
ories to this way of murdering our time, and b}^ so doing have 
acquired the name of Methodists. Having told you how we do not 
spend our time, I will next say how we do. We breakfast com- 
monly between eight and nine ; till eleven, we read either the 
Scripture, or the sermons of some faithful preacher of those holy 
mysteries ; at eleven we attend divine service, which is performed 
here twice every day ; and from twelve to three we separate, and 
amuse ourselves as we please. During that interval, I either read 
in my own apartment, or walk, or ride, or work in the garden. We 
seldom sit an hour after dinner, but if the weather permits, adjourn 
to the garden, where, with Mrs. Unwin and her son, I have gen- 
erally the pleasure of religious conversation till tea-time. If it rains 
or is too windy for walking, we either converse within doors or 
sing some hymns of Martin's collection, and by the help of Mrs. 
Unwin's harpsichord make up a tolerable concert, in which our 
hearts, I hope, are the best performers. After tea we sally forth 
to walk in good earnest. Mrs. Unwin is a good walker, and we 
have generally travelled about four miles before we see home again. 
When the days are short we make this excursion in the former part 
of the day, between church time and dinner. At night we read 
and converse as before till supper, and commonly finish the evening 
either with hymns or a sermon, and last of all the family are called 
to prayers. I need not tell you that such a life as this is consist- 
ent with the utmost cheerfulness; accordingly, we are all happy, 
and dwell together in unity as brethren." 

Mrs. Cowper, the wife of Major (now Colonel) Cowper, to whom 
this was written, was herself strongly Evangelical ; Cowper had, in 
fact, unfortunately for him, turned from his other relations and 
friends to her on that account. She, therefore, would have no 
difficulty in thinking that such a life was consistent with cheerful- 
ness, but ordinary readers will ask how it could fail to bring on 
another fit of hypochondria. The answer is probably to be found 
in the last words of the passage. Overstrained and ascetic piety 
found an antidote in affection. The Unwins were Puritans and 
enthusiasts, but their household was a picture of domestic love. 

With the name of Mrs. Cowper is connected an incident which 
occurred at this time, and which illustrates the propensity to self- 
inspection and self-revelation which Cowper had in common with 
Rousseau. Huntingdon, like other little towns, was all eyes and 
gossip: the new-comer was a mysterious stranger who kept him- 
self aloof from the general society, and he naturally became the 
mark for a little stone-throwing. Young Unwin happening to be 
passing near " the Park " on his way from London to Hunting- 
don, Cowper gave him an introduction to its lady, in a letter to 
whom he afterwards disclosed his secret motive. " My dear 
Cousin, — You sent my friend Unwin home to us charmed with 



COIVPER, 25 

your kind reception of him, and with everything he saw at the 
Park. Shall 1 once more give you a peep into my vile and deceitful 
heart ? What motive do you think lay at the bottom of my con- 
duct when I desired him to call upon you ? I did not suspect, 
at first, that pride and vainglory had any share in it; but quickly 
after I had recommended the visit to him, I discovered, in that 
fruitful soil, the very root of the matter. You know I am a 
strano^er here ; all such are suspected characters, unless they 
bring their credentials with them. To this moment, 1 beheve, 
it is a matter of speculation in the place, whence I came, and to 
whom I belong. Though my friend, you may suppose, before I was 
admitted an inmate here, was satisfied that 1 was not a mere vaga- 
bond, and has, since that time, received more convincing proofs of 
my sponsibility ; yet I could not resist the opportunity of furnishing 
him withjDCular demonstration of it, by introducing him to one of 
my most splendid connexions ; that when he hears me called ' that 
fellow Cowper,' which has happened heretofore, he may be able, 
upon unquestionable evidence, to assert my gentlemanhood, and 
relieve me from the weight of thai opprobrious app^-Uation. Oh, 
pride ! pride ! it deceives with the subtlety of a serpent, and seems 
to walk erect, though it crawls unon the earth. How will it twist 
and twine itself about to get from under the Cross, which it is the 
glory of our Christian calling to be able to bear with patience and 
good-will. They who can guess at the heart of a stranger, — and 
you especially, \\\\o are of a compassionate temper, — will be more 
ready, perhaps, to excuse me, in ^ this instance, than I can be to 
excuse mvself. But, in good truth, it was abominable pride of heart, 
indignation, and vanity, and deserves no better name." 

Once more, however obsolete Cowper's belief, and the language 
in which he expresses it may have become for many of us. we must 
take it as his philosophy of life. At this time, at all events, it Avas 
a source of happiness. " The storm being passed, a quiet and 
peaceful serenity of soul succeeded:" and the serenity in this case 
was unquestionably produced in part by faith. 

" I was a stricken deer that left the herd 
Long since ; v.'ith many an arrow deep infixed 
Mv panting side was charged, when I withdrew 
To seek a tranquil death in distant shades. 
There was I found by one who had himself 
Been hurt by the archers. In his side he bore, 
And in his hands and feet, the cruel scars, 
With gentle force soliciting the darts. 
He drew them forth and healed and bade me live." 

Cowper thought for a moment of taking orders, but his dread of 
appearing in public conspired -with the good sense which lay be- 
neath his excessive sensibility to put a veto on the design. He, 
however, exercised the zeal of a neophyte in proselytism to a 
greater extent than his own judgment and good taste approved 
when his enthusiasm had calmed down. 



26 COWFER. 



CHAPTER III. 

AT OLNEY — MR. NEWTON. 

CowPER had not been two years with the Unwins when Mr. 
Unwin, the father, was killed by a fall from his horse ; this broke 
up the household. But between Cowper and Mrs. Unwin an in- 
dissoluble tie had been formed. It seems clear, notwitlistanding 
Southey's assertion to the contrary, that they at one time meditated 
marriage, possibly as a propitiation to the evil tongues which did 
not spare even this most innocent connexion ; but they were pre- 
vented^from fulfilling their intention by a return of Cowper's mal- 
ady. They became companions for life. Cowper says they were 
as mother and son to each other ; but Mrs. Unwin was only seven 
years older than he. To label their connexion is impossiljle, and 
to try to do it would be a platitude. In his poems Cowper calls 
Mrs. Unwin Mary ; she seems always to have called him Mr. Cow- 
per. It is evident that her son, a strictly virtuous and religious 
man, never had the slightest misgiving about his mother's position. 

The pair had to choose a dwelling-place ; they chose Olney, in 
Buckinghamshire, on the Ouse. The Ouse was "a slow winding 
river," watering low meadows, from which crept pestilential fogs. 
Olnev was a dull town, or rather village, inhabited by a population 
of lace-makers, ill-paid, fever-stricken, and for the rnost part as 
brutal as they were poor. There was not a woman in the place^ 
excepting Mrs. Newton, with whom Mrs. Unwin could associate, 
or to whom she could look for help in sickness, or other need. The 
house in which the pair took up their abode was dismal, prison like, 
and tumble-down ; when they left it, the competitors for the suc- 
cession were a cobbler and a publican. It looked upon the Market- 
place, but it was in the close neighbourhood of Silver End, the 
worst part of Olney. In winter the cellars were full of water. 
There were no pleasant walks within easy reach, and in winter 
Cowper' s only exercise was pacing thirty yards of gravel, with the 
dreary supplement of dumb-bells. What was the attraction to this 
" well," this " abyss," as Cowper himself called it, and as, physi- 
cally and socially, it was ? 

The attraction was the presence of the Rev. John Newton, 
then curate of Olney. The vicar was Moses Brown, an Evangel- 
ical and a religious writer, who has even deserved a place among the 
worthies of the revival : but a family of thirteen children, some of 



COWPER. 



27 



whom it appears too closely resembled the sons of Eli, had com- 
pelled him to take advantage of the indulgent character of the 
ecclesiastical polity of those days by becoming a pluralist and a 
non-resident, so that the curate had Olney to himself. The patron 
was the Lord Dartmouth, who, as Cowper says, " wore a coronet 
and prayed." John Newton was one of the shining lights and 
foremost leaders and preachers of the revival. His name was 
great both in the Evangelical churches within the pale of the 
Establishment, and in the Methodist churches without it. He was 
a brand plucked from the very heart of the burning. We have a 
memoir of his life, partly written by himself, in the form of letters, 
and completed under his superintendence. It is a monument of 
the age of Smollett and Wesley, not less characteristic than is 
Cellini's memoir of the times in which he lived. His father was 
master of a vessel, and took him to sea when he was eleven. His 
mother was a pious Dissenter, who was at great pains to store his 
mind with religious thoughts and pieces. She died when he was 
young, and his stepmother was not pious. He began to drag his 
religious anchor, and at length, having read Shaftesbury, left his 
theological moorings altogether, and drifted into a wide sea of un- 
godliness, blasphemy, and recklessness of living. Such at least is 
the picture drawn by the sinner saved of his own earlier years. 
While still but a stripling he fell desperately in love with a girl of 
thirteen; his affection for her was as constant as it was roman- 
tic; through all his wanderings and sufferings he never ceased 
to think of her, and after seven years she became his wife. His 
father frowned on the engagement, and he became estranged from 
home. He was impressed ; narrowly escaped shipwreck, deserted, 
and was arrested and flogged as a deserter. Released from the 
navy, he was taken into the service of a slave-dealer on the coast 
of Africa, at whose hands, and those of the man's negro mistress, 
he endured every sort of ill-treatment and contumely, being so 
starved that he was fain sometimes to devour raw roots to stay his 
hunger. His constitution must have been of iron to carry him 
through all that he endured. In the meantime his indomitable 
mind was engaged in attempts at self-culture ; he studied a Euclid 
which he had brought with him, drawing his diagrams on the sand ; 
and he afterwards managed to teach hmiself Latin by means of a 
Horace and a Latin Bible, aided by some slight vestiges of the 
education which he had received at a grammar school. His con- 
version was brought about by the continued influences of Thomas 
a Kempis, of a very narrow escape, after terrible sufferings, from 
shipwreck, of the impression made by the sights of the mighty 
deep on a soul which, in its weather-beaten casing, had retained its 
native sensibility, and, we may safely add, of the disregarded but 
not forgotten teachings of his pious mother. Providence was now 
kind to him ; he became captain of a slave-ship, and made several 
voyages on the business of trade. That it was a wicked trade he 
seems to have had no idea; he says he never knew sweeter or 
more frequent hours of divine communion than on his two last 



28 COWPER. 

voyages to Guinea. Afterwards it occurred to him that though his 
employment was genteel and profitable, it made him a sort of 
gaoler, unpleasantly conversant with both chains and shackles ; 
and he besought Providence to fix him in a more humane calling. 

In answer to his prayer came a fit of apoplexy, which made it 
danfjerous for him to go to sea again. He obtained an oflice in 
the port of Liverpool, but soon he set his heart on becoming a 
minister of the Church of England. He applied for ordination to 
the Archbishop of York, but not having the degree required by the 
rules of the Establishment, he received through his Grace's secre- 
tary " the softest refusal imaginable." The Archbishop had not 
had the advantage of perusing Lord Macaulay's remarks on the dif- 
ference between the policy of the Church of England and that of 
the Church of Rome, with regard to the utilization of religious 
enthusiasts. In the end Newton was ordained by the Bishop of 
Lincoln, and threw himself with the energy of a new-born apostle 
upon the irreligion and brutality of Olney. No Carthusian's breast 
could glow more intensely with the zeal which is the offspring of 
remorse. Newton was a Calvinist, of course, though it seems not 
an extreme one ; otherwise he would probably have confirmed 
Cowper in tlie darkest of hallucinations. His religion was one of 
mystery and miracle, full of sudden conversions, special provi- 
dences, and Satanic visitations. He himself says that " his name 
was up about the country for preaching people mad ;" it is true 
that in the eyes of the profane Methodism itself was madness ; 
but he goes on to say "whether it is owing to the sedentary life 
the women live here, poring over their (lace) pillows for ten or 
twelve hours every day, and breathing confined air in their crowded 
little rooms, or whatever may be the immediate cause, I suppose 
we have near a dozen in different degrees disordered in their 
heads, and most of them I believe truly gracious people." He 
surmises that "these things are permitted in judgment, that they 
who seek occasion for cavilling and stumbhng may have what 
they want." Nevertheless there were in him not only force, cour- 
age, burning zeal for doing good, but great kindness, and even 
tenderness of heart. "I see in this world," he said, "two heaps 
of human happiness and misery ; now, if I can take but the 
smallest bit from one heap and add it to the other, I carry a point 
— if. as I go home, a child has dropped a half-penny, and by giving 
it another I can wipe away its tears, I feel I have done something." 
There was even in him a strain, if not of humour, of a shrewdness 
wliich was akin to it, and expressed itself in many pithy sayings. 
" If two angels came dowm from heaven to execute a divine com- 
mand, and one was appointed to conduct an empire and the other 
to sweep a street in it, they would feel no inclination to change 
employments." " A Christian sliould never plead spirituahty for 
being a sloven ; if he be -but a shoe-cleaner, he should be the best 
in the parish." "My principal method for defeating heresy is by 
establishing truth. One proposes to fill a bushel with tares; now 
if I can fiill it first with wheat, I shall defy his attempts." That his 



COWFER. 29 

Calvinism was not very dark or sulphureous, seems to be shovv'n 
from his repeating with gusto the saying of one of the old women 
of Olney when some preacher dwelt on the doctrine of predesti- 
nation — '•• Ah, I liave long settled that point ; for if God had not 
cliosen me before I was born, I am sure he would have seen notli- 
ing to have chosen me for afterwards." That he had too much 
sense to take mere profession for religion appears from his de- 
scribing the Calvinists of Olney as of two sorts, which reminded 
him of the two baskets of Jeremiah's figs. The iron constitution 
which had carried him through so many hardships enabled him to 
continue in his ministry to extreme old age. A friend at length 
counselled him to stop before he found himself stopped by being 
able to speak no longer. " I cannot stop," he said, raising his 
voice. "What! shall the old African blasphemer stop white he 
can speak ? " 

At the instance of a common friend. Newton had paid Mrs. 
Unwin a visit at Huntingdon, after her husband's death, and had 
at once established the ascendency of a powerful character over 
her and Cowper. He now beckoned the pair to his side, placed 
them in the house adjoining his own, and opened a private door 
between the two gardens, so as to have his spiritual children 
always beneath his eye. Under this, in the most essential respect, 
unhappy influence, Cowper and Mrs. Unwin together entered on 
"a decided course of Christian happiness;" that is to say, they 
spent all their days in a round of religious exercises withoul relax- 
ation or relief. On fine summer evenings, as the sensible Lady 
Hesketh saw with dismay, instead of a walk, there was a prayer- 
meeting. Cowper himself was made to do violence to his intense 
shyness by leading in prayer. He was also made to visit the poor 
at once on spiritual missions, and on that of almsgiving, for which 
Thornton, the religious philanthropist, supplied Newton and his 
disciples with means. This, which Southey appears to think 
about the worst part of Newton's regimen, was probably its re- 
deeming feature. The effect of doing good to others on anv mind 
was sure to be good; and the sight of real suffering was likely to 
banish fancied ills. Cowper in this way gained, at all events, a 
practical knowledge of the poor, and learned to do them justice, 
though from a rather too theological point of view. Seclusion 
from tlie sinful world was as much a part of the system of Mr. 
Newton as it was of the system of Saint Benedict. Cowper was 
almost entirely cut off from intercourse with his friends and people 
of his own class. He dropped his correspondence even with his 
beloved cousin. Lady Hesketh, and would probably have dropped 
his correspondence with Hill, had not Hill's assistance in money 
matters been indispensable. To complete liis mental isolation, it 
appears that, having sold his library, he had scarcely any books. 
Such a course of Christian happiness as this could only end in one 
way ; and Newton himself seems to have had the sense to see that 
a storm was brewing, and that there was no way of conjuring it but 
by contriving som.e more congenial occupation. So the disciple 



30 COWPER. 

was commanded to employ his poetical gifts in contributing to a 
livmn-book which Newton was compiling. Cowper's Olney hymns 
have not any serious value as poetry. Hymns rarely have. The 
relations of man with Deity transcend and repel poetical treatment. 
There is nothing in them on which the creative imagination can be 
exercised. Hymns can be little more tlian incense of the wor- 
shipping soul. Those of the Latin Church are the best; not be- 
cause they are better poetry than the rest (for they are not), but 
because their language is the most sonorous. Cowper's hymns 
were accepted by the religious body for which they were written, 
as expressions of its spiritual feeling and desires ; so far they were 
successful. They are the work of a religious man of culture, and 
free from anything wild, erotic, or unctuous. But, on the other 
hand, there is nothing in them suited to be the vehicle of lofty de- 
votion ; nothing, that we can conceive a multitude, or even a prayer- 
meeting, uplifting to heaven with voice and heart. Southey has 
pointed to some passages on which the shadow of the advancing 
malady falls ; but in the main there is a predominance of religious 
joy and hope. The most despondent hymn of the series is Temp- 
tatiofi^ the thought of which resembles that of The Castaway. 

Cowper's melancholy may have been aggravated by the loss of 
his only brother, who died about this time, and at whose death-bed 
he was present; though in the narrative which he wrote, joy at 
John's conversion and the religious happiness of his end seems to 
exclude the feelings by which hypochondria was likely to be fed. 
But his mode of life under Newton was enough to account for the 
return of his disease, which in this sense may be fairly laid to the 
charge of religion. He again went mad, fancied, as before, that he 
,was rejected of Heaven, ceased to pray as one helplessly doomed, 
and again attempted suicide. Newton and Mrs. Unwin at first 
treated the disease as a diabolical visitation, and "with deplorable 
consistency," to borrow the phrase used by one of their friends in 
the case of Cowper's desperate abstinence from prayer, abstained 
from calhng in a physician. Of this, again, their religion must 
bear the reproach. In other respects they behaved admirably. 
Mrs. Unwin, shut up for sixteen months with her unhappy part- 
ner, tended him with unfailing love ; alone she did it, for he could 
bear no one else about him ; though, to make her part more trying, 
he had conceived the insane idea that she hated him. Seldom has 
a stronger proof been given of the sustaining power of affection. 
Assuredly, of whatever Cowper may have afterwards done for his 
kind, a great part must be set down to tfie credit of Mrs. Unwin. 

" Mary ! I want a lyre with other strings, 

Such aid from heaven as some have feigned they drew, 

An eloquence scarce given to mortals, new 
And undebased by praise of meaner things, 
That, ere through age or woe I shed my wings, 

I may record thy worth with honour due, 

In verse as musical as thou art true, 
And that immortalises whom it sings. 



COPPER. 31 

But thou hast little need. I'here is a book 

By seraphs writ with beams of heavenly light, 
On which the eyes of God not rarely look, 
A chronicle of actions just and bright; 
There all thy deeds, my faithful Mary, shine, 
And, smce thou own'st that praise, I spare thee mine." 

Newton's friendship, too, was sorely tried. In the midst of the 
malady the lunatic took it into his head to transfer himself from 
his own house to the Vicarage, which he obstinately refused to 
leave ; and Newton bore this infliction for several months without 
repining, though he might well pray earnestly for his friend's de- 
liverance. " The Lord has numbered the days in which I am ap- 
pointed to wait on him in this dark valley, and he has given us such 
a love to him, both as a believer and a friend, that I am not weary ; 
but to be sure his deliverance would be to me one of the greatest 
blessings my thoughts can conceive." Dr. Cotton was at last 
called in, and under his treatment, evidently directed against a 
bodily disease, Cowper was at length restored to sanity. 

Newton once compared his own walk in the world to that of a 
physician going through Bedlam. But he was not skilful in his 
treatment of the literally insane. He thought to cajole Cowper out 
of his cherished horrors by calling his attention to a case resem- 
bling his own. The case was that of Simon Browne, a Dissenter, 
who had conceived the idea that, being under the displeasure of 
Heaven, he had been entirely deprived of his rational being and 
left with merely his animal nature. He had accordingly resigned 
his ministry, and employed himself in compiling a dictionary, which, 
he said, was doing nothing that could require a reasonable soul. 
He seems to have thought that theology fell under the same cate- 
gory, for he proceeded to write some theological treatises, which 
he dedicated to Queen Caroline, calling her Majesty's attention to 
the singularity of the authorship as the most remarkable phe- 
nomenon of her reign. Cowper, however, instead of falling into 
the desired train of reasoning, and being led to suspect the exist- 
ence of a similar illusion in himself, merely rejected the claim of 
the pretended rival in sjDiritual affliction, declaring his own case to 
be far the more deplorable of the two. 

Before the decided course of Christian happiness had time 
again to culminate in madness, fortunately for Cowper, Newton 
left Olney for St. Mary Woolnoth. He was driven away at last 
by a quarrel with his barbarous parishioners, the cause of which 
did him credit. A fire broke out at Olney, and burnt a good many 
of its straw-thatched cottages. Newton ascribed the extinction of 
the fire rather to prayer than water, but he took the lead in practi- 
cal measures of relief, and tried to remove the earthly cause of 
such visitations by putting an end to bonfires and illuminations on 
the 5th of November. Threatened with the loss of their Guy 
Fawkes, the barbarians rose upon him, and he had a narrow escape 
from their violence. We are reminded of the case of Cotton Mather, 



32 



COWPER. 



who, after being a leader in witch-burning, nearly sacrificed his 
life in combatting the fanaticism which opposed itself to the intro- 
duction of inoculation. Let it always be remembered that besides 
its theological side, the Revival had its philanthropic and moral 
side; that it abolished the slave-trade, and at last slavery; that it 
waged war, and effective war, under the standard of the gospel, 
upon masses of vice and brutality, which had been/ totally neglected 
by the torpor of the Establishment ; that among large classes of 
the people it was the great civilising agency of the time. 

Newton was succeeded as curate of OIney by his disciple, and 
a man of somewhat the same cast of mind and character, Thomas 
Scott, the writer of the Commentary on the Bible and The Force of 
Truth. To Scott Cowper seems not to have greatly taken. He 
complains that, as a preacher, he is always scolding the congrega- 
tion. Perhaps Newton had foreseen that it would be so, for he 
specially commended the spiritual son whom he was leaving to the 
care of the Rev. William Bull, of the neighbouring town of New- 
port Pagnell, a dissenting minister, but a member of a spiritual 
connexion which did not stop at the line of demarcation between 
Nonconformity and the Establishment. To Bull Cowper did greatly 
take ; he extols him as "aDissenter, but a liberal one," a man of 
letters and of genius, master of a fine imagination — or, rather, not 
master of it — and addresses him as Cai'issiine Taiii'ornm. It is 
rather singular that Newton should have given himself such a suc- 
cessor. Bull was a great smoker, and had made himself a cozy and 
, secluded nook in his garden for the enjoyment of his pipe. He was 
probably something of a spiritual as well as of a physical Ouietist, 
for he set Cowper to translate the poetry of the great exponent of 
Quietism, Madame Guyon. The theme of all the pieces which 
Cowper has translated is the same — Divine Love and the raptures of 
the heart that enjoys it — the blissful union of the drop with the 
Ocean — the Evangelical Nirvana. If this line of thought was not 
altogether healthy, or conducive to the vigorous performance of 
practical duty, it was, at all events, better than the dark fancy of 
Reprobation." In his admiration of Madame Guyon, her translator 
showed his affinity, and that of Protestants of the same school, to 
Fenelon and the Evangelical element which has lurked in the Ro 
man Catholic church since the days of Thomas a Kempis. 



CO IVPER. 33 



CHAPTER IV. 

AUTHORSHIP — THE MORAL SATIRES. 

Since his recovery, Cowper had been looking out for what he 
most needed,, a pleasant occupation. He tried drawing, carpenter- 
ing, gardening. Of gardening he had always been fond ; and 
he* understood it, as shown by the loving though somewhat 
" stercoraceous " minuteness of some passages in The Task. A 
little greenhouse, used as a parlour in summer, where he sat 
surrounded by beauty and fragrance, and lulled by pleasant sounds, 
was another product of the same pursuit, and seems almost 
Eiysian in that dull, dark hfe. He also found amusement in 
keeping tame hares, and he fancied that he had reconciled the 
hare to man and dog. His three tame hares are amone the canon- 
ised pets of literature, and they were to his genius what '•' Sailor" 
was to the genius of Byron. But Mrs. Unwin, who had terrible 
reason for studying his case, saw that the thing most wanted was 
congenial employment for the mind, and she "incited him to try 
his hand at poetry on a larger scale. He listened to her advice, 
and when he was nearly fifty years of age became a poet. He 
had acquired the faculty of verse-writing, as we have seen ; he had 
even to some extant formed his manner when he was young. Age 
must by this time have quenched his fire, and tamed his imagina- 
tion, so that the didactic style would suit him best. In the length 
of the interval between his early poems and his great work he 
resembles Milton ; but widely different in the two cases had been 
the current of the intervening years. 

Poetry written late in life is of course, free from youthful 
crudity and extravagance. It also escapes the youthful tendency 
to imitation. Cowper's authorship is ushered in by Southey with 
a history of English poetry ; but this is hardly in place: Cowper 
had little connexion with anything before him. Even his knowl- 
edge of poetry was not great. In his youth he had read the great 
poets, and had studied Milton especially with the ardour of intense 
admiration. Nothing ever made him so angrv as Johnson's Life 
of Milton. "Oh! "he cries, " I could thrash his old jacket till I 
made his pension jingle in his pocket." Churchill had made a great 
— far too great — an impression on him wlien he was a Templar. 
Of Churchill, if of anybody, he must be regarded as a follower, 

3 



34 COWPER. 

though only in his earlier and less successful poems. In expres- 
sion he always regarded as a model the neat and gay simplicity of 
Prior. But so little had he kept up his reading of anything but 
sermons and hymns, that he learned for the first time from Johnson's 
Lives the existence of Collins He is the offspring of the Religious 
Revival rather than of any school of art. His most important 
relation to any of his predecessors is, in fact, one of antagonism 
to the hard glitter of Pope. 

In urging her companion to write poetry, Mrs. Unwin was 
on the right path ; her puritanism led her astray in the choice of 
a theme. She suggested The Progress of Error 2i^ a subject for 
a " Moral Satire." It was unhappily adopted, and The Progress 
of Error was followed by Truths Table Talk, Expostulation, 
Hope, Charity, Conversation, and Retireineiit. When the series 
was published, Table Talk was put first, being supposed to be the 
lightest and the most attractive to an unregeuerate world. The 
judgment passed upon this set of poems at the time by the Critical 
Review seems blasphemous to the fond biographer, and is so 
devoid of modern smartness as to be almost interesting as a 
literary fossil. But it must be deemed essentially just, though 
the reviewer errs, as many reviewers have erred, in measuring the 
writer's capacity by the standard of his first performance. " These 
poems," said the Critical Review, "are written, as we learn from 
the title-page, by Mr. Cowper of the Inner Temple, who seems to 
be a man of a sober and religious turn of mind, with a benevolent 
heart, and a serious wish to inculcate the precepts of morality ; 
he is not, however, possessed of any superior abilities or the 

power of genius requisite, for so arduous an undertaking 

He says what is incontrovertible, and what has been said over 
and over again with much gravity, but says nothing new, sprightly, 
or entertaining; travelling on a plain, level, flat road, with great 
composure almost through the whole long and tedious volume, 
which is little better than a dull sermon in very indifferent verse 
on Truth, the Progress of Error, Charity, and some other grave 
subjects. If this author had followed the advice given by Carac- 
cioli, and which he has chosen for one of the mottoes prefixed to 
these poems, he would have clothed his indisputable truths in 
some more becoming disguise, and rendered his work much more 
agreeable. In its present shape we cannot compliment him on its 
beauty ; for as this bard himself sweetly sings : — 

" The clear harangue, and cold as it is clear, 
Falls soporific on the listless ear." 

In justice to the bard it ought to be said that he wrote under 
the eye of the Rev. John Newton, to whom the design had been 
duly submitted, and who had given his imprimatur in the shape 
of a preface which took Johnson, the publisher, aback by its 
gravity. Newton would not have sanctioned any poetry which 
had not a distinctly religious object, and he received an assurance 



COWPER. 



35 



from tiie poet that the Hvely passages were introduced only as 
honev on the rim of the medicinal cup, to commend its healing 
contents to the lips of a giddy world. The Rev. John Newton 
must have been exceedingly austere if he thought that the quantity 
of honey used was excessive. 

A genuine desire to make society better is always present in 
these poems, and its presence lends them the only interest which 
they possess except as historical monuments of a religious 
V movement. Of satirical vigour they have scarcely a semblance. 
There are three kinds of satire, corresponding to as many different 
views of humanity and life ; the Stoical, the Cynical, and the 
Epicurean. Of Stoical satire, with its strenuous hatred of vice 
and wrong, the type is Juvenal. Of Cynical satire, springing from 
bitter contempt of humanity, the type is Swift's Gulliver, while its 
quintessence is embodied in his lines on the Day of Judgment. 
Of Epicurean satire, flowing from a contempt of humanity which 
is not bitter, and lightly playing with the weakness and vanities 
of mankind, Horace is the classical example. To the first two 
kinds, Cowper's nature was totally alien, and when he attempts 
anvthing in either of those lines, the only result is a querulous 
and censorious acerbity, in which his real feelings had no part, 
and which on mature reflection offended his own better taste. In 
the Horatian kind he might have excelled, as the episode of the 
Retired Statesman, in one of these poems shows. He might 
have excelled, that is, if like Horace he had known the world. 
But he did not know the world. He saw the "great Babel" 
only "through the loopholes of retreat," and in the columns of his 
weekly newspaper. Even during the years, long past, which he 
spent in the world, his experience had been confined to a small 
literary circle. Society was to him an abstraction on which he 
discoursed like a pulpiteer. His satiric whip not only has no lash, 
it is brandished in the air. 

No man was ever less qualified for the office of a censor ; his 
judgment is at once disarmed, and a breach in his principles is at 
once made by the slightest personal influence. Bishops are bad ; 
they are like the Cretans, evil beasts and slow bellies; but the 
bishop whose brother Cowper knows is a blessing to the Church. 
Deans and Canons are lazy sinecurists, but there is a bright ex- 
ception in the case of the Cowper who held a golden stall at 
Durham. Grinding India is criminal, but Warren Hastings is ac- 
acquitted, because he was with Cowper at Westminster. Disci- 
pline was deplorably relaxed in all colleges except that of which 
Cowper's brother was a fellow. Pluralities and resignation bonds, 
the grossest abuses of the Church, were perfectly defensible in the 
case of any friend or acquaintance of this Church Reformer. 
Bitter lines against Popery inserted in The Task were struck out, 
because the writer had made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. 
Throckmorton, who were Roman Catholics. Smoking was detes- 
table, except when practised by dear Mr. Bull. Even gambling, 
the blackest sin of fashionable society, is not to prevent Fox, the 



,5 COWPEK. 

great Whig, from being a ruler in Israel. Besides, in all his social 
judgments, Cowpcr is at a wrong point of view. He is always de. 
luded by the idol of liis cave. He writes perpetually on the twofold 
assumption that a life of retirement is more favourable to virtue than 
a life of action, and that " God made the country, while man made 
the town. Both parts of the assumption are untrue. A life of ac- 
tion is more favourable to virtue, as a rule, than a life of retirement, 
and the development of humanity is higher and richer, as a rule, 
in the town than in the country. If Cowper's retirement was 
virtuous, it was so because he was actively employed in the exercise 
of his highest faculties : had he been a mere idler, secluded from 
his kind, his retirement would not have been virtuous at all. His 
flight from the world was rendered necessary by his malady, and 
respectable by his literary work ; but it was a flight and not a 
victory. His misconception was fostered and partly produced by a 
religion which v/as essentially ascetic, and which, while it gave 
birth to characters of the highest and most energetic beneficence, 
represented salvation too little as the reward of effort, too much as 
the reward of passive belief and of spiritual emotion. 

The most readable of the Moral Satires is Retireme7it, in 
which the writer is on his own ground, expressing his genuine 
feelings, arid which is, in fact, a foretaste of The Task. Expos- 
tulation, a warning to P^ngland from the example of the Jews, is the 
best constructed , the rest are totally wanting in unity, and even in 
connexion. In all there are flashes of epigrammatic smartness. 

" How shall I speak thee, or thy power address, 
Thou God of our idolatry, the press ? 
By thee, religion, liberty, and laws 
Exert their influence, and advance their cause ; 
By thee, worse plagues than Pharaoh's land befell, 
Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell : 
Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise. 
Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies, 
Like Eden's dread probationary tree. 
Knowledge of good and evil is from thee." 

Occasionally there are passages of higher merit. The episode 
of statesmen in Retirement has been already mentioned. The lines 
on the two disciples going to Emmaus in Con7'e?-satio7i, though little 
more than a paraphrase of the Gospel narrative, convey pleasantly 
the Evangelical idea of the Divine Friend. Cowper says in one 
of his letters that he had been intimate with a man of fine taste 
who had confessed to him that though he could not subscribe to 
the truth of Christianity itself, he could never read this passage of 
St. Luke without being deeply affected by it, and feeling that if 
the stamp of divinity was impressed upon anything in the Scrip- 
tures, it was upon that passage. 

" It happened on a solemn eventide, 
, Soon after He that was our surety died. 



COWPER. ,y 

Two bosom friends, each pensively inclined, 
The scene of all thf)se sonows^eft behind, 
Sought their own village, busied as they went 
In musings worthy of the great event : 
They spake of him they loved, of him whose life, 
Though blameless, had incurr'd perpetual strife, 
Whose deeds had left, in spite of hostile arts, 
A deep memorial graven on their hearts. 
The recollection, like a vein of ore, 
The farther traced enrich'd them still the more ; 
They thought hmi, and they justly thought him, one 
Sent to do more than he appear'd' to have done, 
To exalt a people, and to place them high 
Above all else, and wonder'd he should die. 
Ere yet they brought their journey to an end, 
A stranger join'd them, courteous as a friend, 
And ask'd them with a kind engaging air 
What their affliction was. and begg'd'a share. 
Tnform'd, he gather'd up the broken thread. 
And truth and wisdom gracing all he said, 
Explam'd, illustrated, and search'd so well 
1 he tender theme on which thev chose to dwell. 
That reaching home, the night, they said is near. 
We must not now be parted, sojourn here.— 
The new acquaintance soon became a guest. 
And made so welcome at their simple feast,' 
He bless'd the bread, but vanish'd at the word. 
And left them both exclaiming, 'Twas the Lord! 
» Did not our hearts feel all he deign'd to say, 

Did they not burn within us by the way? " 

in^T?lrP'*'''^fu?'''"^ ^^ morning church in Truth is a good render 
ing of Hogarth's picture :— ^ 

" Yon ancient prude, whose wither'd features show 
. blie might be young some forty years ago, 

Mer elbows pihion'd close upon'her hips 

Her head erect, her fan upon her lips, 

Her eyebrows arch'd, her eyes both gone astray 

1 o watch yon amorous couple in their play, 

With bony and unkerchief'd neck defies 

1 he rude inclemency of wintry skies, 

And sails with lappet-head and mincing airs 

Daily, at clink of bell, to morning prayers. 

To thrift and parsimony much inclined, 

She yet allows herself that boy behind ; 
•■ The shivering urchin, bending as he goes 

With slipshod heels, and dew-drops at his nose. 

His predecessor's coat advanced to wear. 

Which future pages are yet doom'd to share : 

Carries her Bible tuck'd beneath his arm, 

And hides his hands to keep his fingers warm." 

Of personal allusions there are a few; if the satirist had not 
been prevented from indulging in them by his taslrhe would 



35 COWPER. 

have been debarred by his i^orance. Lord Chesterfield, as the 
incarnation of the world ar^ the most brilliant servant of the 
arch-enemy, comes in for a lashing under the name of Petronius. 

" Petronius ! all the muses weep for thee, 
But every tear shall scald thy memory. 
The graces too, while virtue at their shrine 
Lay bleeding under that soft hand of thine, 
Felt each a mortal stab in her own breast, 
Abhorr'd the sacrifice, and cursed the priest. 
Thou polish'd and high-finish'd foe to truth, 
Gray-beard corrupter of our listening youth, 
To purge and skim away the filth of vice. 
That so refined it might the more entice, 
Then pour it on the morals of thy son 
To taint his heart, was worthy of thine cnvn?* 

This is about the nearest approach to Juvenal that the Evangelical 
satirist ever makes. In Hope there is a vehement vindicatixjn of 
the memory of Whitefield. It is rather remarkable that there is 
no mention of Wesley. But Cowper belonged to the Evangelical 
rather than to the Methodist section. It may be doubted whether 
the living Whitefield would have been much to his taste. 

In the versification of the moral satires there are frequent 
faults, especially in the earlier poems of the series ; though Cow- 
per's power of writing musical verse is attested both by the occa- 
sional poems and by The Task. ' 

With the Moral Satires may be coupled, though written later, 
Tirocinium; or, a Review of Schools. Here Cowper has the ad- 
vantage of treating a subject which he understood, about which he 
felt strongly, and desired for a practical purpose to stir the feelings 
of his readers. He set to work in bitter earnest. " There is a 
sting." he says, "inverse that prose neither has nor can have; 
and I do not know that schools in the gross, and especially public 
schools, have ever been so pointedly condemned before. But they 
are become a nuisance, a pest, an abomination, and it is fit that the 
eyes and noses of mankind should be opened, if possible, to per- 
ceive it." His descriptions of the miseries which children in his 
day endured, and, in spite of all our improvements, must still to 
some extent endure, in boarding-schools, and of the effects of the 
system in estranging boys from their parents and deadening home 
affections, are vivid and true. Of course, the Public School sys- 
tem was not to be overturned by rhyming, but the author of Tiro- 
ciniimi awakened attention to its faults, and probably did some- 
thing towards amending them. The best lines, perhaps, have 
been already quoted in connexion with the history of the writer's 
boyhood. There are, however, other telling passages, such at that 
on the indiscriminate use of emulation as a stimulus : — 

" Our public h'ives of puerile resort 
That are of chief and most approved report, 



COWPRR. 39 

To such base hopes in many a sordid soul 

Owe their repute in part, but not the whole. 

A principle, whose proud pretensions pass 

Unquestion'd, though the jev/el be but glass. 

That with a world not often over-nice 

Ranks as a virtue, and is yet a vice, 

Or rather a gross compound, justly tried, 

Of envy, hatred, jealousy, and pride. 

Contributes most perhaps to enhance their fame. 

And Emulation is its precious name. 

Boys once on fire with that contentious zeal 

Feel all the rage that female rivals feel ; 

The prize of beautv in a woman\s eyes 

Not b.righter than in theirs the scholar's prize. 

The spirit of tliat competition burns 

With all varieties of ill by turns. 

Each vainly magnifies his own success, 

Resents his fellow's, wislies it were less, 

Exults in his miscarriage if he fail, 

Deems his reward too gi'eat if he prevail, 

And labors to surpass him day and night, 

Less for improvement than to tickle spite. 

The spur is powerful, and I grant its force ; 

It pricks the genius forward in its course, 

Allows short time for play, and none for sloth, 

And felt alike by each, advances both. 

But judge where so much evil iiftervenes, 

The end, though plausible, not worth the means. 

Weigh, for a moment, classical desert 

Against a heart depraved and temper hurt. 

Hurt, too, perhaps for life, for early wrong 

Done to the nobler part, affects it long. 

And you are staunch indeed in learning's cause, 

I you can crown a discipline that draws 

Such mischiefs after it, with much applause." 

He might have done more, if he had been able to point to the 
alternative of a good day-school, as a combination of home affec- 
tions with the superior teachings hardly to be found, except in a 
large school, and which Cowper, in drawing his comparison be- 
tween the two systems, fails to take into account. 

To the same general class of poems belongs Anti-Thelypthora^ 
which it is due to Cowper's memory to say was not published in 
his lifetime. It is an angry pasquinade on an absurd book advo- 
cating polygamy on Biblical grounds, by the Rev. Martin Madan, 
Cowper's quondam spiritual counsellor. Alone among Cowper's 
works it has a taint of coarseness. 

The Moral Satires pleased Franklin, to whom their social phi- 
losophy was congenial, as at a later day, in common with all Cow- 
per's works, they pleased Cobden, who no doubt specially relished 
the passage in Charity^ embodying the philanthropic sentiment of 
Free Trade. There was a trembling consultation as to the expe- 
diency of bringing the volume under the notice of Johnson. " One 



40 COWPER. 

of his pointed sarcasms, if he should happen to be displeased, 
would soon find its way into all companies, and spoil the sale." 
*' I think it would be well to send in our joint names, accompanied 
with a handsome card, such an one as you will know how to fabri- 
cate, and such as may predispose him to a favourable perusal of the 
book, by coaxing him into a good temper; for he is a great bear, 
with all his learning and penetration." Fear prevailed; but it 
seems that the book found its way into the dictator's hands, that 
his judgment on it was kind, and that he even did something to 
temper the wind of adverse criticism to the shorn lamb. Yet parts 
of it were likely to incur his displeasure as a Tory, as a Church- 
man, and as one who greatly preferred Fleet Street to the beau- 
ties of nature ; while with the sentimental misery of the writer, 
he could have had no sympathy whatever. Of the incomplete- 
ness of Johnson's view of character there could be no better 
instance than the charming weakness of Cowper. Thurlow and 
Colman did not even acknowledge their copies, and were lashed 
for their breach of friendship with rather more vigour than the 
Moral Satires display, in The Valedictory^ which unluckily sur- 
vived for posthumous publication when the culprits had made their 
peace. 

Cowper certainly misread himself if he believed that ambition, 
even literary ambition, was a large element in his character. But 
having published, he felt ft keen interest in the success of his 
publication. Yet he took its failure and the adverse criticism very 
calmly. With all his sensitiveness, from irritable and suspicious 
egotism, such as is the most common cause of moral madness, he 
was singularly free. In this respect his philosophy served. him 
well. 

It may safely be said that the Moral Satires would have sunk 
into oblivion if they had not been buoyed up by The Task. 



COiVPEK, 



41 



CHAPTER V. 

THE TASK. 

Mrs. Unwin's influence produced the Moral Satires. The 
Task was born of a more potent inspiration. One day Mrs. Jones, 
the wife of a neighbouring clergyman, came into Olney to shop, and 
with her came her sister, Lady Austen, the widow of a Baronet, a 
woman of the world, who had lived much in France, gay, sparkling 
and vivacious, but at the same time full of feeling even to over- 
flowing. The apparition acted like magic on the recluse. He 
desired Mrs. Unwin to ask the two ladies to stay to tea ; then 
shrank from joining the party which he had himself invited ; ended 
by joining it, and, his shyness giving way with a rush, engaged in 
animated conversation with Lady Austen, and walked with her part 
of the way home. On her an equally great effect appears to have 
been produced. A warm friendship at once sprang up, and before 
long Lady Austen had verses addressed to her as Sister Annie. 
Her ladyship, on her part, was smitten with a great love of retire- 
ment, and at the same time with great admiration for Mr. Scott, the 
curate of Olney, as a preacher, and she resolved to fit up for her- 
self " that part of our great building which is at present occupied by 
Dick Coleman, his wife and child, and a thousand rats." That a 
woman of fashion, accustomed to French salons, should choose such 
an abode, with a pair of Puritans for her only society, seems to 
show that one of the Puritans at least must have possessed great 
powers of attraction. Better quarters were found for her in the 
Vicarage ; and the private way between the gardens, which ap- 
parently had been closed since Newton's departure, was opened 
again. 

Lady Austen's presence evidently wrought on Cowper like an 
elixir: " From a scene of the most uninterrupted retirement," he 
writes to Mrs. Unwin, " we have passed at once into a state of con- 
stant engagement. Not that our society is much multiplied ; the 
addition of an individual has made all this difference. Lady Aus- 
ten and we pass our days alternately at each other's Chateau. In 
the morning I walk w^ith one or other of the ladies, and in the 
evening wind thread. Thus did Hercules, and thus probably did 
Samson, and thus do I ; and, were both those heroes living, I should 
not fear to challenge them to a trial of skill in that business, or 



42 COWPER. 

doubt to beat them both." It was, perhaps, while he was winding 
thread that Lady Austen told him the story of John Gilpin. He 
lay awake at night laughing over it, and next morning produced the 
ballad. It soon became famous, and was recited by Henderson, a 
popular actor, on the stage, though, as its gentility was doubtful, 
its author withheld his name. He afterwards fancied that this 
wonderful piece of humour had been written in a mood of the deepest 
depression. Probably he had written it in an interval of high 
spirits between two such moods. Moreover, he sometimes exag- 
gerated his own misery. He will begin a letter with 2. de profuiidis^ 
and towards the end forget his sorrows, glide into commonplace 
topics, and write about them in the ordinary strain. Lady Austen 
inspired John Giiphi. She inspired, it seems, the lines on the 
loss of the Royal George. She did more : she invited Cowper to 
try his hand at something considerable in blank verse. When he 
asked her for a subject, she was happier in her choice than the 
lady who had suggested the Progress of Error. She bade him 
take the sofa on which she was reclining, and which, sofas being 
then uncommon, was a more striking and suggestive object than it 
would be now. The right chord was struck; the subject was ac- 
cepted ; and The Sofa grew into The Task; the title of the song re- 
minding us that it was " commanded by the fair." As Paradise 
Lost'is to militant Puritanism, so is The Task to the religious move- 
ment of its author's time. To its character as the poem of a sect 
it no doubt owed and still owes much of its popularity. Not only 
did it give beautiful and effective expression to the sentiments of a 
large religious party, but it was about the only poetry that a strict 
Metliodist or Evangelical could read; while to those whose wor- 
ship was unrituaHstic and who were debarred by their principles 
from the theatre and the concert, anything in the way of art that 
was not illicit must have been eminently welcome. But The Task 
has merits of a more universal and enduring kind. Its author him- 
self says of it : — " If the work cannot boast a regular plan (in which 
respect, however, I do not think it altogether indefensible), it may 
yet boast that the reflections are naturally suggested always by the 
preceding passage, and that, except the fifth "book, which is rather 
of a political aspect, the whole has one tendency, to discountenance 
the modern enthusiasm after a London life, and to recommend 
rural ease and leisure as friendly to the cause of piety and virtue.'' 
A regular plan, assuredly. The Task has not. It rambles through a 
vast variety of subjects, religious, political, social, philosophical, 
and horticultural, with as httle of method as its author used in 
taking his morning walks. Nor, as Mr. Benham has shown, are 
the reflections, as a rule, naturally suggested by the preceding 
passage. From the use of a sofa by the gouty to those who, 
being free from gout, do not need sofas — and so to country walks 
and country life, is hardly a natural transition. It is hardly a natural 
transition from the ice palace built by a Russian despot, to despotism 
and politics in general. But it' Cowper deceives himself in fancy- 
ing that there is a plan or a close connexion of parts, he is right as 



COWPER. 4^ 

to the existence of a pervading tendency. The praise of retire- 
ment and of country life as most friendly to piety and virtue, is the 
perpetual refrain of The Task, if not its definite theme. From this 
idea immediately flow the best and the most popular passages : those 
which please apart from anything peculiar to a religious school; 
those which keep the poem alive ; those which have found their way 
into the heart of the nation, and intensified the taste for rural and 
domestic happiness, to which they most winningly appeal. In these 
Cowper pours out his inmostfeelings, with the liveliness of exhilara- 
tion, enhanced by contrast with previous misery. The pleasures of 
the country and of home— the walk, the garden, but above all the 
"intimate delights " of the winter evening, the snug parlour, with its 
close-drawn curtains shutting out the stormy night, the steaming and 
bubbling tea-urn, the cheerful circle, the book read aloud, the news- 
paper through which we look out into the unquiet world— are 
painted by the writer with a heartfelt enjoyment which infects 
the reader. These are not the joys of a hero, nor are they the joys 
of an AlciEus "singing amidst the clash of arms, or when he had 
moored on the wet shore his storm-tost barque." But they are 
pure joys, and they present themselves in competition with those 
of Ranelagh and the Basset Table, which are not heroic or even 
masculine, any more than they are pure. 

The well-known passages at the opening of The Winter Even- 
ing are the self-portraiture of a soiU in bliss— such bliss as that 
soul could know— and the poet would have found it very difficult 
to depict to himself by the utmost effort of his religious imaginatioq 
any paradise which he would really have enjoyed more. 

"Now stir the fire, and ciose the shutters fast. 
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, 
And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn 
Throws up a steamy column, and the cups, 
That cheer but not inebriate, wait on eac' 
So let us welcome peaceful evening in. 

* * * * 

This folio of four pages, happy work ! 
Which not even critics criticise, that holds 
Inquisitive attention while I read 
Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair, 
Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break, 
What is it but a map of busy life, / 

Its fluctuations and its vast concerns ? 
* * * * 

'Tis pleasant through the loop-holes of retreat 
To peep at such a world- To see the stir 
Of the great Babel and not feel the crowd. 
To hear the roar she sends through all her gates 
At a safe distance, where the dying sound 
Falls a soft murmur on the injured ear. 
Thus sitting and surveying thus at ease 
The globe and its concerns, I seem advanced 



44 



COWPER. 



To some secure and more than mortal height, 

That liberates and exempts me from them all. 

It turns submitted to my view, turns round 

With all it generations ; I behold 

The tumult and am still. The sound of war 

Has lost its terrors ere it reaches me, 

Grieves but alarms me not. I mourn the pride 

And avarice that make man a wolf to man, 

Hear the faint echo of those brazen throats 

By which he speaks the language of his heart, 

And sigh, but never tremble at the sound. 

He travels and expatiates, as the bee 

From flower to flower, so he from land to laud; 

The manners, customs, policy of all 

Pay contribution to the store he gleans ; 

He sucks intelligence in every clime, 

And spreads the honey of his deep research 

At his return, a rich repast for me. 

He travels, and I too. I tread his deck, 

Ascend his topmast, through his peering eyes 

Disco\''er countries, with a kindred heart 

Suffer his woes and share in his escapes, 

While fancy, like the finger of a clock, 

Runs the great circuit, and is still at home. 

Oh, winter ! ruler of the inverted year, 
Thy scatter 'd hair with sleet like ashes fill'd, 
Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks 
Fringed with a beard made white with other snows 
Than those of age ; thy forehead wrapt in clouds 
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne 
A sliding car indebted to no wheels, 
And urged by storms along its slippery way ; 
I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st, 
And dreaded as thou art. Thou hold'st the sun 
A prisoner in the yet undawning East, 
Shortening his journey between morn and noon, 
And hurrying him impatient of his stay ^ 

Down to the rosy West. But kindly still 
Compensating his loss with added hours 
Of social converse and instructive ease, * 

And gathering at short notice in one group 
The family dispersed by daylight and its cares. 
I crown thee king of intimate delights, 
Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, 
\ And all the comforts that the lowly roof 

Of undisturb'd retirement, and the hours 
Of long uninterrupted evening know." 

The writer of The Task also deserves the crown which he has 
himself claimed as a close observer and truthful painter of nature. 
In this respect, he challenges comparison with Thomson. The 
range of Thomson is far wider; he paints nature in all her moods, 
Cowper only in a few, and those the gentlest, though he has said 
of himself that "he was always an admirer of thunder-storms, even 
before he knew whose voice he heard in them, but especially of 



cow PER. 45 

thunder rolling over the great waters." The great waters he had 
not seen for many years ; he had never, so far as we know, seen 
mountains, hardly even high hills; his only landscape was the flat 
country watered by the Ouse. On the other hand, he is perfectly 
genuine, thoroughly Enghsh, entirely emancipated from false Ar- 
cadianism, the yoke of which still sits heavily upon Thomson, 
whose "muse " moreover, is perpetually "wafting" him away 
from the country and the chmate which he knows to countries and 
climates which he does not know, and which he describes in the 
style of a prize poem. Cowper's landscapes, too, are peopled with 
the peasantry of England ; Thomson's, with Damons, Palaemons, 
and Musidoras, tricked out in the sentimental costume of the sham 
idyl. In Thomson, you always find the effort of the artist work- 
ing up a description ; in Cowper, you find no effort ; the scene is 
simply mirrored on a mind of great sensibihty and high pictorial 
power. 

"And witness, dear companion of my walks. 
Whose arm this twentieth winter I perceive 
Fast lock'd in mine, with pleasure such as love, 
Confirm'd by long experience of thy worth 
And well-tried virtues, could alone inspire — 
Witness a joy that thou hast doubled long. 
Thou know'st my praise of nature most sincere, 
And that my raptures are not conjured up 
To serve occasions of poetic pomp, 
But genuine, and art partner of them all. 
How oft upon yon eminence our pace 
Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne 
The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew, 
While Admiration, feeding at the eye, 
And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene! 
Thence with what pleasure have we just discern 
The distant plough slow moving, and beside 
His labouring team that swerved not from the track. 
The sturdy swain diminish'd to a boy! 
Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain 
Of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er, 
Conducts the eye along his sinuous course 
Delighted. There, fast rooted in their bank, 
Stand, never ovcrlook'd, our favourite elms, 
That screen the herdsman's solitary hut ; 
While far beyond, and overthwart the stream, 
That, as with molten glass, inlavs the vale. 
The sloping land recedes into the clouds ; 
Displaying on its varied side the grace 
Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tower, 
Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bell* 
Just undulates upon the listening ear, 
Groves, heaths, and smoking villages, remote. 
Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily viewed. 
Please daily, and whose novelty survives 
Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years- 
Praise justly due to those that I describe." 



46 COWPER. 

This is evidently genuine and spontaneous. We stand with 
Cowper and Mrs. Unwin on the hill in the ruffling wind, like them, 
scarcely conscious that it blows, and feed admiration at the eye 
upon the rich and thoroughly English champaign that is outspread 
below. 

" Nor rural sights alone, but rural sounds, 
Exhilarate the spirit, and restore 
The tone of languid Nature. Mighty winds, 
That sweep the skirt of some far-spreading wood 
Of ancient growth^ make mnsic not zmlike 
The dash of Ocean on his windittg shore ^ 
And lull the spirit while they fill the mind; 
Unnumber'd branches waving in the blast, 
And all their leaves fast fluttering, all at once. 
Nor less composure waits upon the roar 
Of distant floods, or on the softer voice 
Of neighbouring fountain, or of rills that slip 
Throicgh the cleft rock, and ch?fning as they fall 
Upon loose pebbles, lose themselves at length 
In matted grass that with a Itvelier green 
Betrays the secret -of their silent course. 
Nature inanimate employs sweet sounds, 
But animated nature sweeter still, 
To soothe and satisfy the human ear. 
Ten thousand warblers cheer the day, and one 
The livelong night : nor these alone, whose notes 
Nice-finger'd Art must emulate in vain, 
But cawing rooks, and kites that swim sublime 
In still-repeated circles, screaming loud. 
The jay, the pie, and e'en the boding owl 
That hails the rising m.oon, have charms for me. 
Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh. 
Yet heard in scenes where peace forever reigns, 
And only there, please highly for their sake." 

Affection such as the last lines display for the inharmonious 
at well as the harmonious, for the uncomely as well as the comely 
parts of nature, has been made familiar by Wordsworth, but it was 
new in the time of Cowper. Let us compare a landscape painted 
by Pope in his Windsor forest, with the Hues just quoted, and we 
shall see the difference between the art of Cowper and that of the 
Augustan age. 

" Here waving groves a checkered scene display. 
And part admit and part exclude the day. 
As some coy nymph her lover's warm address 
Not quite indulges, nor can quite repress. 
There interspersed in lawns and opening glades 
The trees arise that share each other's shades : 
Here in full light the russet plains extend, 
There wrapt in clouds, the bluish hills ascend. 
E'en the wild heath displays her purple dyes, 
And midst the desert fruitful fields arise, 
That crowned with tufted trees and springing com. 
Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn." 



COWPER. 47 

The low Berkshire hills wrapt in clouds on a sunny day ; a 
sable desert in the neighbourhood of Windsor; fruitful fields 
arising in it, and crowned with tufted trees and springing corn — 
evidently Pope saw all this, not on an eminence, in the ruffling wind, 
but in his study with his back to the window, and the Georgics or 
a translation of them before him. 

Here, again, is a little picture of rural life from the Winter 
Morning Walk. 

" The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence 
Screens them, and seem half-petrified to sleep 
In unrecumhenf sadness. There they wait 
Their wonted fodder ; not like hungering man, 
Fretful ifunsupplied; but silent, meek, 
And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay. 
He from the stack carves out the accustomed load. 
Deep-plunging, and again^. deep plunging oft, • 
His broad keen knife into the solid mass : 
Smooth as a ivall the upright remnant stands^ 
With such undeviating and even force 
He severs it away : no needless care, 
Lest storms should overset the leaning pile 
Deciduous, or its own unbalanced weight. 
Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcern'd 
The cheerful haunts of man ; to wield the axe 
And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear, 
From morn to eve, his solitary task. 
Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears "^ 
And tail cropp'd short, half lurcher and half cur, , 
His dog attends him. Close behind his heel 
Now creeps he slow ; and now, with many a frisk 
Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow 
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it wfth his snout ; 
Then shakes his powder'd coat and barks for joy. 
Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl 
Moves right tow^ard the mark ; nor stops for aught, 
But now and then with pressure of his thumb 
To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube, 
That fumes beneath his nose : the trailing cloud 
Streams far behind him, scenting all the air." 

The minutely faithful description of the man carving the load 
of hay out of the stack, and again those of the gambolling dog, and 
the woodman smoking hia pipe with the steam of smoke trail- 
ing behind him, remind us of the touches of minute fidelity in 
Homer. The same may be said of many other passages. 

" The sheepfold here 
Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe. 
At first., progressive as a stream they seek 
The fniddle field ; hit, scattered by degrees, 
Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land. 
There from the sun-burnt hay-field homeward creeps 
The loaded wain ; while lightc?t\l of its charge, 



■^^ 



48 COWPER. 

The wain that meets it passes swiftly by ; 
The boorish driver leaning o'er his team 
Vociferous and impatient of delay." 

A specimen of more imaginative and distinctly poetical descrip- 
tion is the well-known passage on evening, in writing which Cow- 
per would seem to have had Collins in his mind. 

" Come, Evening, once again, season of peace ; 
Return, sweet Evening, and continue long ! 
Methinks I see thee in the streaky west, 
"With matron-step slow-moving, while the Night 
Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employed 
In letting fall the curtain of repose 
On bird and beast, the other charged for man 
With sweet oblivion of the cares of day : 
Not sumptuously adorn'd^ nor needing aid, 
Like homely-featured Night, of clustering gems! 
A star or two just twinkling on thy brow 
Suffices thee ; save that the moon is thine 
No less than hers, not worn indeed on high 
With ostentatious pageantry, but set 
With modest grandeur in thy purple zone, 
Resplendent less, but of an ampler round." 

Beyond this line Cowperdoes not go, and had no idea of going ; 
he never thinks of lending a soul to material nature as Wordsworth 
and Shelley do. He is the poetic counterpart of Gainsborough, as 
the great descriptive poets of a later and more spiritual day are 
the counterparts of Turner, We have said that Cowper's peas- 
ants are genuine as well as his landscape ; he might have been a 
more exquisite Crabbe if he had turned his mind that way, instead 
of writing sermons about a world which to him was little more 
than an abstraction, distorted, moreover, and discoloured by his 
religious asceticism. 



*&* 



" Poor, yet industrious, modest, quiet, neat, 
Such claim compassion in a night like this, 
And have a friend in every feeling heart. 
Warm'd, while it lasts, by labour, all day long 
They brave the season, and yet find at eve, 
111 clad, and fed but sparely, time to cool. 
The frugal housewife trembles when she lights 
Her scanty stock of brushwood, blazing clear, 
But dying soon, like all terrestrial joys. 
A few small embers left, she nurses well ; 
And, while her infant race, with outspread hands 
And crowded knees sit cowering o'er the sparks, 
Retires, content to quake, so they be warm'd. 
The man feels least, as more inured than she 
To winter, and the current in his veins 
More briskly moved by his severer toil ; 
Yet he, too^ finds his own distress in theirs. 



The taper soon extinguish'd, which I saw 
Dangled along at the cold finger's end 
Just when the day declined ; and the brown loaf 
Lodged on the shelf, half eaten without sauce 
Of savoury cheese, or butter, costlier still : 
Sleep seems their only refuge : for, alas ! 
Where penury is felt the thought is chained, 
And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few! 
With all this thrift they thrive not. All the care 
Ingenious Parsimony takes, but just 
Saves the small inventory, bed and stool, 
Skillet, and old carved chest, from public sale. 
They live, and live without extorted alms 
From grudging hands: but other boast have none 
To soothe their honest pride that scorns to beg, 
Nor comfort else, but in their mutual love." 

Here we have the plain, unvarnished record of visitings amonw 
the poor of Olney. The last two lines are simple truth as well as 
the rest. 

" In some passages, especially in the second book, you will ob- 
serve me very satirical." In the second book of T/i^: Task there 
are some bitter things about the clergy ; and in the passage pour- 
traying a fashionable preacher, there is a touch of satiric vicrour, 
or rather of that power of comic description which vvas one o^ the 
writer's gifts. But of Cowper as a satirist enough has been said. 

"What there is of a religious cast in the volume I have thrown 
towards the end of it, for two reasons ; first, that I might not revolt 
the reader at his entrance ; and, secondly, that my best impressions 
might be made last. Were I to write as many volumes as Lope de 
Vega or Voltaire, not one of them would be without this tincture. 
If the world like it not, so much the worse for them. I make all 
the concessions I can, that I may please them, but I will not please 
them at the expense of conscience." The passages of The Task 
penned by conscience, taken together, form a lamentably large pro- 
portion of the poem. An ordinary reader can be carried through 
them, if at all, only by his interest in the history of opinion, or by 
the companionship of the writer, who is always present, as Walton 
IS m his Angler, as White is in his Selbourne. Cowper, however, 
even at his worst, is a highly cultivated Methodist : if he is some- 
times enthusiastic, and possibly superstitious, he is never coarse 
or unctuous. He speaks with contempt of "the twang of the con- 
venticle." Even his enthusiasm had by this time been somewhat 
tempered. Just after his conversion he used to preach to ever\'- 
body. He had found out, as he tells us himself, that this was a 
mistake, that "the pulpit was for preaching; the garden, the par- 
lour, and the walk abroad were for friendlv and agreeable conver- 
sation." It may have been his consciousness of a certain change 
in himself that deterred him from taking Newton into his confidence 
when we engaged upon The Task. The worst passages are those 
which betray a fanatical antipathy to natural science, especially 
that in the third book (150-190). The episode of the judgment 



5^' 



COWPER. 



of Heaven on the young atheist Misagathus, in the sixth book, is 
also fanatical and repulsive. 

Puritanism had come into violent collision with the temporal 
power, and had contracted a character fiercely political and revo- 
lutionary. Methodism fought only against unbelief, vice, and the 
coldness of the Establishment ; it was in no way political, much 
less revolutionary ; by the recoil from the atheism of the French 
Revolution, its leaders, including Wesley himself, were drawn 
rather to the Tory side. Cowper, we have said, always remained 
in principle what he had been born, a Whig, an unrevolutionary 
Whig, an "Old Whig," to adopt the phrase made canonical by- 
Burke. 

*' 'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower 
Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume. 
And we are weeds without it. All constraint 
Except what wisdom lays on evil men 
Is evil." 

The sentiment of these lines, which were familiar and dear to 
Cobden, is tempered by judicious professions of loyalty to a king 
who rules in accordance with the law. At one time Cowper was 
inclined to regard the government of George III. as a repetition of 
that of Charles I., absolutist in the State and reactionary in the 
Church ; but the progress of revolutionary opinions evidently in- 
creased his loyalty, as it did that of many other Whigs, to the good 
Tory king. We shall presently see, however, that the views of 
the French Revolution itself expressed in his letters are wonder- 
fully rational, calm, and free from the political panic and the apoc- 
alyptic hallucination, both of which we should rather have ex- 
pected to find in him. He describes himself to Newton as having 
seen, since his second attack of madness, " an extramundane 
character with reference to this globe, and though not a native of 
the moon, not made of the dust of this planet." The Evangelical 
party has remained down to the present day non-political, and in its 
own estimation extramundane, taking part in the affairs of the na- 
tion only when some religious object was directly in view. In speak- 
ing of the family of nations, an Evangelical poet is of course a 
preacher of peace and human brotherhood. He has even in some 
lines of Charity^ which also were dear to Cobden, remarkably an- 
ticipated the sentiment of modern economists respecting the in- 
fluence of free trade in making one nation of mankind. The pass- 
age is defaced by an atrociously bad simile : — 

"Again — the band of commerce was design'd, 
To associate all the branches of mankind, 
And if a boundless plenty be the robe, 
Trade is the golden girdle of the globe. 
Wise to promote whatever end he means, 
God opens fruitful Nature's various scenes, 
Each climate needs what other climes produce, 
And offers something to the general use ; 



COWPER. 51 

No land but listens to the common call, 
And in return receives supply from all. 
This genial intercourse and mutual aid 
Cheers what were else an universal shade, 
Calls Nature from her ivy-mantled den, 
And softens human rock- work into men.'* 

Now and then, however, in reading The Task, we come across a 
dash of warlike patriotism which, amidst the general philanthropy, 
surprises and offends the reader's palate, like the taste of garlic in 
our butter. 

An innocent Epicurism, tempered by religious asceticism of a 
mild kind — such is the philosophy of The Task, and such the ideal 
embodied in the portrait of the happy man with which it concludes. 
Whatever may be said of the religious asceticism, the Epicurism 
required a corrective to redeem it from selfishness and guard it 
against self-deceit. This solitary was serving humanity in the best 
way he could, not by his prayers, as in one rather fanatical passage 
he 'suggests, but by his literary work ; he had need also to remem- 
ber that humanity was serving him. The newspaper through which 
he looks out so complacently into the great " Babel," has been 
printed in the great Babel itself, and brought by the poor post- 
man, with his " spattered boots, strapped waist, and frozen locks," 
to the recluse sitting comfortably by his fireside. The "fragrant 
lymph" poured by "the fair" for their companion in his cosy 
seclusion, has been brought over the sea by the trader, who 
must encounter the moral dangers of a trader's life, as well as the 
perils of the stormy wave. It is delivered at the door by 

" The waggoner who bears 
The pelting brunt of the tempestuous night, 
With half-shut eyes and puckered cheeks and teeth 
Presented bare against the storm ; " 

and whose coarseness and callousness, as he whips his team, are 
the consequences of the hard calling in which he ministers to the 
recluse's pleasure and refinement. If town life has its evils, from 
the city comes all that makes retirement comfortable and civilised. 
Retirement without the city would have been bookless, and have 
fed on acorns. 

Rousseau is conscious of the necessity of some such institution 
as slavery, byway of basis for his beautiful life according to nature. 
The celestial purity and felicity of St. Pierre's Paul and Virginia 
are sustained by the labour of two faithful slaves. A weak point 
of Cowper's philosophy, taken apart from his own saving activity 
as a poet, betrays itself in somewhat similar way. 

" Or if the garden with its many cares 
All well repaid demand him, he attends 
The welcome call, conscious how much the hand 
Of lubbard labour needs his watchful eye, 



52 COWPER. 

Oft loitering lazily if not o'erseen -, 
Or misapplying his unskilful strength 
But much performs himself, no %vorks indeed 
That ask robust tough sinezvs bred to toil, 
Servile employ, but such as may amuse, 
I\ot tire, demanding rather skill than force.'' 

We are told in The Task that there is no sin in allowing our 
own happiness to be enhanced by contrast with the less happy 
condition of others : if we are doing our best to increase the hap- 
piness of others, there is none. Cowper, as we have said before, 
was doing this to the utmost of his limited capacity. 

Both in the Moral Satires and in The Task, there are sweeping 
denunciations of amusements which we now justly deem innocent, 
and without which, or something equivalent to them, the wrinkles 
on the brow of care could not be smoothed, nor life preserved from 
dulness and moroseness. There is fanaticism in this, no doubt ; 
but in justice to the Methodist as well as to the Puritan, let it be 
remembered that the stage, card parties, and even dancing, once 
had in them something from which even the most liberal morality 
might recoil. 

In his writings generally, but especially in The Task, Cowper, 
besides being an apostle of virtuous retirement and evangelical 
piety, is, by his general tone, an apostle of sensibility. The Task 
is a perpetual protest not only against the fashionable vices and the 
irreligion but against the hardness of the world ; and in a world 
which worshipped Chesterfield the protest was not needless, nor 
was it ineffective. Among the most tangible characteristics of this 
special sensibility is the tendency of its brimming love of human- 
kind to overflow upon animals ; and of this there are marked in- 
stances in some passages of The Task. 

" I would not enter on my list of friends 
(Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, 
Yet wanting sensibility) the man 
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." 

Of Cowper's sentimentalism (to use the word in a neutral sense), 
part flowed from his own temperament, part was Evangelical, but 
part belonged to an element which was European, which produced 
the Nouvelle Heloise and the Sorrows of Wertha', and which was 
found among the Jacobins in sinister companionship with the cruel 
i'renzy of the Revolution. Cowper shows us several times that 
he had been a reader of Rousseau, nor did he fail to produce in 
jhis tiine a measure of the same effect which Rousseau produced ; 
though there have been so many sentimentalists since, and the 
vein has been so much worked, that it is difificult to carry ourselves 
back in imagination to the day in which Parisian ladies could forego 
balls to read the Nouvelle Heloise, or the stony heart of people of 
the world could be melted by The Task. 

In his versification, as in his descriptions, Cowper flattered 



COWPER. ^3 

himself that he imitated no one. But he manifestly imitates the 
softer passages of Milton, whose music he compares in a raptur- 
ous passage of one of his letters to that of a fine organ. To produce 
melody and variety, he, like Milton, avails himself fully of all the 
resources of a composite language. Blank verse confined to short 
Anglo-Saxon words is apt to strike the ear, not like the swell of 
an organ, but like the tinkle of a musical-box. 

The Task made Cowper famous. He was told that he had 
sixty readers at the Hague alone. The interest of his relations 
and friends in him revived, and those of whom he had heard noth- 
ing for many years emulously renewed their connexion. Colman 
and Thurlow reopened their correspondence with him, Colman 
writing to him " Uke a brother." Disciples— young Mr. Rose, for 
instance — came to sit at his feet. Complimentary letters were 
sent to him, and poems submitted to his judgment.' His portrait 
was taken by famous painters. Literary lion-hunters began to fix 
their eyes upon him. His renown spread even to Olney. The 
clerk of All Saints', Northampton, came over to ask him to WTite 
the verses annually appended to the bill of mortality for that par- 
ish. Cowper suggested that " there were several men of genius 
in Northampton, particularly Mr. Cox, the statuary, who, as ever}^- 
body knew, was a first-rate maker of verses." " Alas ! " replied 
the clerk, " I have heretofore borrowed help from him, but he is a 
gendeman of so much reading that the people of our town cannot 
understand him." The compliment was irresistible, and for seven 
years the author of The Task wrote the mortuary verses for All 
Saints', Northampton. Amusement, not profit, was Cowper's aim ; 
he rather rashly gave away his copyright to his publisher, and his 
success does not seem to have brought him money in a direct way ; 
but it brought him a pension of 300/. in the end. In the meantime 
it brought him presents, and among them an annual gift of 50/. 
from an anonymous hand, the first instalment being accompanied 
by a pretty snuff-box ornamented with a picture of the three hares. 
From the gracefulness of the gift, Southey infers that it came from 
a woman, and he conjectures that the woman was Theodora. 



24 COWPER. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SHORT POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS. 

The Task was not quite finished when the influence which had 
inspired it was withdrawn. Among the little mysteries and scandals 
of literary history is the rupture between Cowperand Lady Austen. 
Soon after the commencement of their friendship there had been a 
"fracas," of which Cowper gives an account in a letter to William 
Unwin. " My letters have already apprised you of that close and 
intimate connexion that took place between the lady you visited in 
Queen Anne Street and us. Nothing could be more promising, 
thousfh sudden in the commencement. She treated us with as much 
unreservedness of communication, as if we had been in the same 
house and educated together. At her departure, she herself pro- 
posed a correspondence, and, because writing does not agree with 
your mother, proposed a correspondence with me. This sort of 
intercourse had not been long maintained before I discovered, by 
some slight intimations of it, that she had conceived displeasure at 
somewhat I had written, though I cannot now recollect it ; con- 
scious of none but the most upright, inoffensive intentions. I yet 
apologised for the passage in question, and the flaw was healed 
again. Our correspondence after this proceeded smoothly for a 
?.onsiderable time ; but at length, having had repeated occasion to 
observe that she expressed a sort of romantic idea of our merits, 
and built such expectations of felicity upon our friendship, as we 
were sure that nothing human could possibly answer, I wrote to 
remind her that we were mortal, to recommend her not to think 
more highly of us than the subject would warrant, and intimating 
that when we embellish a creature with colors taken from our own 
fancy, and, so adorned, admire and praise it beyond its real merits, 
we make it an idol, and have nothing to expect in the end but that 
it will deceive our hopes, and that we shall derive nothing from it 
but a painful conviction of our error. Your mother heard me read 
the letter ; she read it herself, and honoured it with her warm appro- 
bation. But it gave mortal offence ; it received, indeed, an answer, 
but such an one as I could by no means reply to ; and there ended 
(for it was impossible it should ever be renewed) a friendship that 
bid fair to be lasting; being formed with a woman whose seeming 
stability of temper, whose knowledge of the world and great ex- 



COWPER. 



^^ 



penence of its folly, but, above all, whose sense of religion and 
seriousness of mind (for with all that gaiety she is a great thinker) 
induced us both, in spite of that cautious reserve that marked our 
characters, to trust her, to love and value her, and to open our 
hearts for her reception. It may be necessary to add that, by her 
own desire, I wrote to her under the assumed relation of a brother, 
and she to me as my sister. Ceu fuinus in aurasP It is impossible 
to read this without suspecting that there was more of "romance " 
on one side than there was either of romance or of consciousness 
of the situation on the other. On that occasion the reconciliation, 
though "impossible," took place, the lady sending, by way of olive 
branch, a pair of ruffles, which it was known she had begun to work 
before the quarrel. The second rupture was final. Hayley, who 
treats the matter with sad solemnity, tells us that Cowper's letter 
of farewell to Lady Austen, as she assured him herself, was ad- 
mirable, though unluckily, not being gratified by it at the time, she 
had thrown it into the fire. Covvper has himself given us, in a let- 
ter to Lady Hesketh, with reference to the final rupture, a version 
of the whole affair : — " There came a lady into this country, by 
name and title Lady Austen, the widow of the late Sir Robert Aus- 
ten. At first she lived with her sister about a mile from Olney; 
but in a few weeks took lodgings at the Vicarage here. Between 
the Vicarage and the back of our house are interposed our garden, 
an orchard, and the garden belonging to the Vicarage. She had 

I'll ^ * ^ 

lived much in France, was very sensible, and had infinite viva- 
city. She took a great liking to us, and we to her. She had 
been used to a great deal of company, and we, fearing that she 
would feel such a transition into silent retirement irksome, con- 
trived to give her our agreeable company often. Becoming con- 
tinually more and more intimate, a practice at length obtained of 
our dining with each other alternately every day, Sundays ex- 
cepted. In order to facilitate our communication, we made doors 
in the two garden-walls aforesaid, by which means we consideraby 
shortened the way from one house to the other, and could meet 
when we pleased without entering the town at all — a measure the 
rather expedient, because the town is abominably dirty, and s,he 
kept no carriage. On her first settlement in our neighbourhood I 
made it my own particular business (for at that time I was not em- 
ployed in writing, having published my first volume and not begun 
my second) to pay my devoirs to her ladyship every morning at 
eleven. Customs very soon became laws. I began The Tasky 
for she was the lady who gave me the Sofa for a subject. Being 
once engaged in the work, I began to feel the inconvenience of my 
morning attendance. We had seldom breakfasted ourselves till ten ; 
and the intervening hour was all the time I could find in the whole 
day for writing, and occasionally it would happen that the half of 
that hour was all that I could secure for the purpose. But there 
was no remedy. Long usage had made that which was at first op- 
tional a point of good manners, and consequently of necessity, 
and I was forced to neglect The Task to attend upon the Muse 



56 



COVVPER. 



who had inspired the subject. But she had ill-health, and before I 
had quite finished the work was obliged to repair to Bristol." Evi- 
dently this was not the whole account of the matter, or there would 
have been no need for a formal letter of farewell. We are very 
sorry to find the revered Mr. Alexander Knox saying, in his cor- 
respondence with Bishop Jebb, that he had a severer idea of Lady 
Austen than he should wish to put into writing for publication, and 
that he almost suspected she was a very artful woman. On the 
other hand, the unsentimental Mr. Scott is reported to have said, 
" Who can be surprised that two women should be continually in 
the society of one man and not quarrel, sooner or later, with each 
other .f"' Considermg what Mrs. Unwin had been to Cowper, and 
wliat he had been to her, a little jealousy on her part would not 
have been highly criminal." But, as Southey observes, we shall 
soon see two women continually in the society of this very man 
without quarrelhng with each other. That Lady Austen's behaviour 
to Mrs. Unwin was in the highest degree affectionate, Cowper has 
himself assured us. Whatever the cause may have been, this bird 
of paradise, having alighted for a moment in Olney, took wing and 
was seen no more. 

Her place as a companion was suppHed, and more than sup- 
plied, by Lady Hesketh. like her a woman of the world, and almost 
as bright and vivacious, but with more sense and stability of char- 
acter, and who, moreover, could be treated as a sister without any 
danger of misunderstanding. The renewal of the intercourse be- 
tween Cowper and the merry and affectionate play-fellow of his 
early days, had been one of the best fruits borne to him by The 
Task, or perhaps we should rather say by yo/ui Gilpin j for on 
reading that ballad she first became aware that her cousin had 
emerged from the dark seclusion of his truly Christian happiness, 
and might again be capable of intercourse with her sunny nature. 
Full of real happiness for Cowper were her visits to Olney ; the 
announcement of her coming threw him into a trepidation of delight. 
And how was this new rival received by Mrs, Unwin ? " There is 
something," says Lady Hesketh, in a letter which has been already 
quoted, " truly affectionate and sincere in Mrs. Unwin's manner. 
No one can express more heartily than she does her joy to have 
me at Olney ; and as this must be for his sake, it is an additional 
proof of her regard and esteem for him." She could even cheer- 
fully yield precedence in trifles, which is the greatest trial of all. 
" Our friend," says Lady Hesketh, " delights in a large table and a 
large chair. There are two of the latter comforts in my parlour. 
I am sorry to say that he and I always spread ourselves out in 
them, leaving poor Mrs. Unwin to find all the comfort she can in a 
small one, half as high again as ours, and considerably harder than 
marble. However, she protests it is what she likes, that she pre- 
fers a high chair to a low one, and a hard to a soft one ; and I hope 
she is sincere ; indeed, I am persuaded she is. She never gave 
the slightest reason for doubting her sincerity; so Mr. Scott's 
coarse theory of the " two women " falls to the ground ; though, as 



COWPER. 



57 



Lady Hesketh was not Lady Austen, room is still left for the more 
delicate and interesting hypothesis. 

By Lady Hesketh's care Cowper was at last taken out of the 
"well" at Olney and transferred, with his partner, to a house at 
Weston, a place in the neighbourhood, but on higher ground, more 
cheerful, and in better air. The house at Weston belonged to Mr. 
Throckmorton, of Weston Hall, with whom and Mrs. Throckmor- 
ton, Cowper had become so intimate that they were already his Mr. 
and Mrs. Frog. It is a proof of his freedom from fanatical bitter- 
ness that he was rather drawn to them by their being Roman 
Catholics, and having suffered rude treatment from the Protestant 
boors of the neighbourhood. Weston Hall had its grounds, with 
the colonnade of chestnuts, the " sportive light " of which still 
"dances " on the pages of The Task ; with the Wilderness, — 

" Whose well-rolled walks, 
With curvature of slow and easy sweep, 
Deception innocent, give ample space 
To narrow bounds — " 
with the Grove, — 

" Between the upright shafts of whose tall elms 
We may discern the thresher at his task, 
Thump after thump resounds the constant flail 
That seems to swing uncertain, and yet falls 
Full on the destined ear. Wide flies the chaff, 
The rustling straw sends up a fragrant mist 
Of atoms, sparkling in the noonday beam." 

A pretty little vignette, which the threshing-machine has now 
made antique. There were ramblings, picnics, and little dinneif- 
parties. Lady Hesketh kept a carriage. Gay hurst, the seat of 
Mr. Wright, was visited, as well as Weston Hall ; the life of the 
lonely pair was fast becoming social. The Rev. John Newton 
was absent in the flesh, but he was present in the spirit, thanks to 
the tattle of Olney. To show that he was, he addressed to Mrs. 
Unwin a letter of remonstrance on the serious change which had 
taken place in the habits of his spiritual children. It was an- 
swered by her companion, who in repelling the censure mingles the 
dignity of self-respect with a just appreciation of the censor's 
motives, in a style which showed that although he was sometimes 
mad, he was not a fool. 

Having succeeded in one great poem, Cowper thought of writing 
another, and several subjects were started — The Mediie7-ranean^ 
The FourA^es of Ma7i, Yardley Oak. The Mediterrajiean would 
not have suited him well if it was to be treated historically, for of 
history he was even more ignorant than most of those who have had 
the benefit of a classical education, being capable of believing that 
the Latin element of our language had come in with the Roman con- 
quest. Of the Four Ages he wrote a fragment. Of Yardley Oak he 
wrote the opening ; it was, apparently, to have been a survey of the 



ss 



COWPER. 



countries in connexion with an immemorial oak which stood in a 
neighbouring chace. But he was forced to say that the mind of man 
was not a fountain but a cistern, and his was a broken one. He had 
expended his stock of materials for a long poem in The Task. 

These, the sunniest days of Cowper's life, however, gave birth 
to many of those short poems which are perhaps his best, certainly 
his most popular works, andVhich will probably keep his name 
ahve when The Task is read only in extracts. The Loss of the 
Royal George^ The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk, The Poplat 
Field, The Shrubbery , the Lines on a Young Lady, and those To 
Mary, will hold their places forever in the treasury of English 
Lyrics. In its humble way The N^eedless Alar?n is one of the most 
perfect of human compositions. Cowper had reason to complain 
of ^sop for having written his fables before him. One great charm 
of these little pieces is their perfect spontaneity. Many of them 
were never published ; and generally they have the air of being the 
simple effusions of the moment, gay or sad. When Cowper was 
in good spirits his joy, intensified by sensibility and past suffering, 
played like a fountain of light on all the little incidents of his quiet 
life. An ink-glass, a flatting mill, a lialibut served up for dinner, 
the kiUing of a snake in the garden, the arrival of a friend wet after 
a journey, a cat shut up in a drawer, sufficed to elicit a little jet of 
poetical delight, the highest and brightest jet of being yohjt Gilpin. 
Lady Austen's voice and touch still faintly hve in two or three 
pieces which were written for her harpsichord. Some of the short 
poems, on the other hand, are poured from the darker urn, and the 
finest of them all is the saddest. There is no need of illustrations 
unless it be to call attention to a secondary quality less noticed 
than those of more importance. That which used to be specially 
Called "wit," the faculty of ingenious and unexpected combination, 
such as is shown in the similes of Hudibras was possessed by 
Cowper in large measure. 

"A friendship that in frequent fits 
Of controversial rage emits 

The sparks of disputation, 
Like hand-in-hand insurance plates, 
Most unavoidably creates 

The thought of conflagration. 

** Some fickle creatures boast a soul 
True as a needle to the pole, 

Their humour yet so various — 
They manifest their whole life through 
The needle's deviations too, 

Their love is so precarious. 

'* The great and small but rarely meet 
On terms of amity complete ; 

Plebeians must surrender, 
And yield so much to noble folk, 

is combining fire with smoke, 

Obscurity with splendour. 



COWTRR. 2g 

*' Some are so placid and serene 
(As Irish bogs are always green), 

They sleep secure from waking ; 
And are indeed a bog, that bears 
Your unparticipated cares 

Unmoved and without quaking. 

** Courtier and patriot cannot mix 
Their heterogeneous politics 

Without an effervescence. 
Like that of salts with lemon juice, 
Which does not yet like that produce 

A friendly coalescence." 

Faint presa.8:es of Byron are heard in such a poem as The SJu'tib- 
bery J and of Wordsworth in such a poem as that To a Yoiincr Lady. 
But of the lyrical depth and passion of the great Revolution poets 
Cowper is wholly devoid. His soul was stirred by no movement 
so mighty, if it were even capable of the impulse. Tenderness he 
has, and pathos as well as playfulness ;.has has unfailing grace and 
ease ; he has clearness like that of a trout-stream. Fashions, even 
our fashions, change. The more metaphysical poetry of our time 
has indeed too much in it, besides the metaphysics, to be in any 
danger of being ever laid on the shelf with the once admired con- 
ceits of Cowley ; yet it may one day in part lose, while the easier 
and more limpid kind of poetry may in part regain, its charm. 

The opponents of the Slave Trade tried to enlist this winning 
voice in the service of their cause. Cowper disliked the task, but 
he wrote two or three anti-Slave-Trade ballads. The Slave Trade-- 
in the Dumps, with its ghastly array of horrors dancing a jig to a 
ballad metre, justifies the shrinking of an artist from a subject hardly 
fit for art. 

If the cistern which had supplied The Task was exhausted, the 
rill of occasional poems still ran freely, fed by a spring which, so 
long as life presented the most trivial object or incident, could not 
fail. Why did not Cowper go on writing these charming pieces, 
which he evidently produced with the greatest facility .? Instead 
of this, he took, under an evil star, to translating Homer. The 
translation of Homer into verse is the Polar Expedition of litera- 
ture, always failing, yet still desperately renewed. Homer defies 
niodern reproduction. His primeval simplicity is a dew of the dawn 
which can never be re-distilled. His primeval savagery is almost 
equally unpresentable. What civilized poet can don the barbarian 
sufficiently to revel, or seem to revel, in the ghastly details of carn- 
age, in hideous wounds described with surgical gusto, in the butchery 
of captives in cold blood, or even in those particulars of the shambles 
and the spit which to the troubadour of barbarism seem as delight- 
ful as the images of the harvest and the vintage ? Poetry can be 
translated into poetry only by taking up the ideas of the original 
into the mind of the translator, which is very difficult when the 
translator and the original are separated by a gulf of thought and 



6o COWPER. 

feeling, and when the gulf is very wide, becomes impossible. There 
is nothing for it in the case of Homer but a prose translation. Even 
in prose to find perfect equivalents for some of the Homeric phrases 
is not easy. Whatever the chronological date of the Homeric 
poems may be, their political and psychological date may be pretty 
well fixed. Politically they belong, as the episode of Thersites 
shows, to the rise of democracy and to its first colhsion with aris- 
tocracy, which Homer regards with the feelings of a bard who sang 
in aristocratic halls. Psychologically they belong to the time when, 
in ideas and language, the moral was just disengaging itself from 
the physical. In the wail of Andromache, for instance, adinon epos,_ 
which Pope improves into "sadly dear," and Cowper, with better 
taste at all events, renders "precious," is really semi-physical, and 
scarcely capable of exact translation. It belongs to an unrepro- 
ducible past, like the fierce joy which, in the same wail, bursts from 
the savaofe woman in the midst of her desolation at the thought of 
the numbers whom her husband's hands had slain. Cowper had 
studied the Homeric poems thoroughly in his youth ; he knew them 
so well that he was able to translate them, not very incorrectly with 
only the help of a Clavis ; he understood their peculiar qualities as 
well as it was possible for a reader without the historic sense to do ; 
he had compared Pope's translation carefully with the original, and 
had decisively noted the defects which make it not a version of 
Homer, but a periwigged epic of the Augustan age. In his own 
translation he avoids Pope's faults, and he preserves at least the 
dignity of the original, while his command of language could never 
fail him, nor could he ever lack the guidance of good taste. But 
we well know where he will be at his best. We turn at once to 
such passages as the description of Calypso's Isle. 



(( 



Alighting on Pieria, down he (Hermes) stooped 
To Ocean, and the billows lightly skimmed 
In form a sea-mew, such as in the bays 
Tremendous of the barren deep her food 
Seeking, dips oft in brine her ample wing. 
In such disguise o'er many a wave he rode, 
But reaching, now, that isle remote, forsook 
The azure deep, and at the spacious grove 
Where dwelt the amber-tressed nymph arrived 
Found her within. A fire on all the hearth 
Blazed sprightly, and, afar diffused, the scent 
Of smooth-split cedar and of cypress-wood 
Odorous, burning cheered the happy isle. 
She, busied at the loom and plying fast 
Her golden shuttle, with melodious voice 
Sat chanting there ; a grove on either side, 
Alder and poplar, and the redolent branch 
Wide-spread of cypress, skirted dark the cave 
Where many a bird of broadest pinion built 
Secure her nest, the owl, the kite, and daw. 
Long-tongued frequenters of the sandy shores. 
A garden vine luxuriant on all sides 



COWPER. 6 1 

Mantled the spacious cavern, cluster-hung 
Profuse ; four fountains of serenest lymph, 
Their sinuous course pursuing side by side, 
Strayed all around, and everywhere appeared 
Meadows of softest verdure purpled o'er 
With violets ; it was a scene to fill 
A God from heaven with wonder and delight." 

There are faults in this, and even blunders, notably in the natu- 
ral history ; and " serenest lymph " is a sad departure from Homeric 
simplicity. Still, on the whole, the passage in the translation 
charms, and its charm is tolerably identical with that of the original. 
In more martial and stirring passages the failure is more signal, and 
here especially we feel that if Pope's rhyming couplets are sorry 
equivalents for the Homeric hexameter, blank verse is superior to 
them only in a negative way. The real equivalent, if any, is the 
romance metre of Scott, parts of whose poems, notably the last can- 
to of Marmion and some passages in the Lay of tJu Last Minstrel^ 
are about the most Homeric things in our language. Cowper 
brought such poetic gifts to his work that his failure might 
have deterred others from making the same hopeless attempt. But 
a failure his work is ; the translation is no more a counterpart o£ 
the original, than the Ouse creeping through its meadows is the 
counterpart of the ^gean rolling before a fresh wind and under a 
bright sun. Pope delights school-boys ; Cowper delights nobody, 
though, on the rare occasions when he is taken from the shelf, he 
commends himself, in a certain measure, to the taste and judgment 
of cultivated men. 

In his translations of Horace, both those from the Satires and 
those from the Odes, Cowper succeeds far better. Horace requires 
in his translator little of the fire which Cowper lacked. In the Odes 
he requires grace, in the Satires urbanity and playfulness, all of 
which Cowper had in abundance. Moreover, Horace is separated 
from us by no intellectual gulf. He belongs to what Dr. Arnold 
called the modern period of ancient history. Nor is Cowper's 
translation of part of the eighth book of Virgil's ^neid bad, in 
spite of the heaviness of the blank verse. Virgil, like Horace, is 
within his intellectual range. 

As though a translation of the whole of the Homeric poems had 
not been enough to bury his finer faculty, and prevent him from 
giving us any more of the minor poems, the publishers seduced 
him into undertaking an edition of Milton, which was to eclipse all 
its predecessors in splendour. Perhaps he may have been partly 
entrapped by a chivalrous desire to rescue his idol from the dispar- 
agement cast on it by the tasteless and illiberal Johnson. The 
project, after weighing on his mind and spirits for some time, was 
abandoned, leaving as its traces only translations of Milton's Latin 
poems, and a few notes on Paradise Lost, in which there is too 
inuch of religion, too little of art. 

Lady Hesketh had her eye on the Laureateship, and probably 



62 COIVPER. 

with that view persuaded her cousin to write loyal verses on the 
recovery of George III. He wrote the verses, but to the hint of 
the Laureateship he said, " Heaven guard my brows from the wreath 
you mention, whatever wreath beside may hereafter adorn them 
It would be a leaden extinguisher clapt on my genius, and I should 
never more produce a line worth reading." Besides, was he not 
already the mortuary poet of All Saints, Northampton ? 



COVVFEK, 63 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE LETTERS. 

SouTHEY, no mean judge in such a matter, calls Cowper the 
best of Enghsh letter-writers. If the first place is shared with him 
by any one it is by Byron, rather than by Gray, whose letters are 
pieces of fine writing, addressed to literary men, or Horace Wal- 
pole, whose letters are memoirs, the English counterpart of St. 
Simon. The letters both of Gray and Walpole, are manifestly 
written for publication. Those of Cowper have the t-rue epistolary 
charm. They are conversation, perfectly artless, and at the same 
time autobiography, perfectly genuine ; whereas all formal autobiog- 
raphy is cooked. They are the vehicles of the writer's thoughts 
and feelings, and the mirror of his life. We have the strongest 
proofs that they were not written for publication. In many of them 
there are outpourings of wretchedness which could not possibly 
have been intended for any heart but that to which they were ad- 
dressed, while others contain medical details which no one would 
have thought of presenting to the public eye. Some, we know, 
were answers to letters received but a moment before ; and Southey 
says that the manuscripts are very free from erasures. Though 
Cowper kept a note-book for subjects, which no doubt were scarce 
with him, it is manifest that he did not premeditate. Grace of form 
he never lacks, but this was a part of his nature, improved by his 
classical training. The character and the thoughts presented are 
those of a recluse who was sometimes a hypochondriac; the life is 
life at Olney. But simple self-revelation is always interesting, and 
a garrulous playfulness with great happiness of expression can lend 
a certain charm even to things most trivial and commonplace. 
There is also a certain pleasure in being carried back to the quiet 
days before railways and telegraphs, when people passed their whole 
lives on the same spot, and life moved always in the same tranquil 
round. In truth, it is to such days that letter-writing, as a species 
of literature, belongs ; telegrams and postal cards have almost killed 
it now. 

The large collection of Cowper's letters is probably seldom 
taken from the shelf ; and the " Elegant Extracts " select those 
letters which are most sententious, and therefore least characteristic. 
Two or three specimens of the other style may not be unwelcome 



64 COWPER, 

or needles-s as elements of a biographical sketch ; though speci> 
mens hardly do justice to a series of which the charm, such as it is, 
is evenly diffused, not gathered into centres of brilliancy like Madam 
de Sevigne's letter on the Orleans Marriage. Here is a letteu 
written in the highest spirits to Lady Hesketh. 

" Olney, Feb. 9th, 1786. 

" My dearest Cousin, — I have been impatient - to tell you 
that I am impatient to see you again. Mrs. Unwin partakes with me 
in all my feelings upon this subject, and longs also to see you, I 
should have told you so by the last post, but have been so com- 
pletely occupied by this tormenting specimen, that it was impossible 
to do it. I sent the General a letter on Monday, that would dis- 
tress and alarm him ; I sent him another yesterday, that will, I 
hope, quiet him again. Johnson has apologised very civilly for the 
multitude of his friend'^ strictures ; and his friend has promised to 
confine himself In future to a comparison of me with the original, 
so that, I doilbt not, we shall jog on merrily together. And now, 
my dear, let me tell you once more that your kindness in promising 
us a visit has charmed us both. I shall see you again. 1 shall 
hear your voice. We shall take walks together. I will show you 
my prospects — the hovel, the alcove, the Ouse and its banks, every- 
thing that I have described. I anticipate the pleasure of those 
days not very far distant, and feel a part of it at this moment. Talk 
not of an inn ! Mention it not for your life ! We have never had 
so many visitors but we could easily accommodate them all; though 
we have received Unwin, and his wife, and his sister, and his son 
all at once. My dear, I will not let you come till the end of May, 
or beginning of June, because before that time my greenhouse will 
not be ready to receive us, and it is the only pleasant room belong- 
ing to us. When the plants go out, we go in. I line it with mats, 
and spread the floor with mats ; and there you shall sit with a bed 
of mignonette at your side, and a hedge of honeysuckles, roses, 
and jasmine ; and I will make you a bouquet of myrtle every day. 
Sooner than the time I mention the country will not be in complete 
beauty. 

" And I will tell you what you shall find at your first entrance. 
Imprimis, as soon as you have entered the vestibule, if you cast a 
look on either side of you, you shall see on the right hand a box of 
my making. It is the box in which have been lodged all my hares, 
and in which lodges Puss at present; but he, poor fellow, is worn 
out with age, and promises to die before you can see him. On the 
right hand stands a cupboard, the work of the same author ; it was 
once a dove-cage, but 1 transformed it. Opposite to you stands a 
table, which I also made ; but a merciless servant having scrubbed 
it until it became paralytic, it serves no purpose now but of orna- 
ment ; and all my clean shoes stand under it. On the left hand, at 
the further end of this superb vestibule, you will find the door of 
the parlour, into which I will conduct you, and where I will intro- 
duce you to Mrs. Unwin, unless we should meet her before, and 



COWPER. 65 

where we will be as happy as the day is long. Order yourself, my 
cousin, to the Swan at Newport, and there you shall find me ready 
to conduct you to OIney. 

" My dear, I have told Homer what you say about casks and 
urns, and have asked him whether he is sure that it is a cask in 
which Jupiter keeps his wine. He swears that it is a cask, and 
that it will never be anything better than a cask to eternity. So, 
if the god is content with it, we must even wonder at his taste, 
and be so too. 

" Adieu ! my dearest, dearest cousin. W. C." 

Here, by way of contrast, is a letter written in the lowest spirits 
possible to Mr. Newton. It displays literary grace inalienable even 
in the depths of hypochondria. It also shows plainly the connex- 
ion of hypochondria with the weather. January was a month to 
the return of which the sufferer always looked forward with dread 
as a mysterious season of evil. It was a season, especially at 
Olney, of thick fog combined with bitter frosts. To Cowper this 
state of the atmosphere appeared the emblem of his mental state ; 
we see in it the cause. At the close the letter slides from spiritual 
despair to the worsted-merchant, showing that, as we remarked 
before, the language of despondency had become habitual, and 
does not always flow from a soul really in the depths of woe. 

To THE Rev. John Newton. 

"Jan. 13th, 1784. 

" My dear Friend, — I too have taken leave of the old year, and 
parted with it iust when you did, but with very different sentiments 
and feelino-s upon the occasion. I looked back upon all the pas- 
sac^es and^occurrences of it, as a traveller looks back upon a wil- 
derness through which he has passed with weariness and sorrow of 
heart reapinf^'no other fruit of his labour than the poor consolation 
that, dreary as the desert was, he has left it all behind him. The 
traveller would find even this comfort considerably lessened if, as 
soon as he had passed one wilderness, another of equal length, and 
equally desolate, should expect him. In this particular, his expe- 
rience and mine would exactlv tally. I should rejoice, indeed, that 
the old year is over and gone, if I had not every reason to prophesy 
a new one similar to it. t + • 

"The new year is already old in my account. I am not, in- 
deed, sufficiently second-sighted to be able to boast by anticipation 
an acquaintance with the events of it yet unborn, but rest con- 
vinced that, be they what they may, not one of them comes a mes- 
sen^rer of o-ood to me. If even death itself should be of the num- 
ber,%e is "no friend of mine. It is an alleviation of the woes even 
of an unenlightened man, that he can wish foi death, and indulge a 
hope, at least, that in death he shall find deliverance. But, loaded 
as my life is with despair, I have no such comfort as would result 
from a supposed probability of better things to come, were it once 

S 



66 COWPER. 

ended. For, more unhappy than the traveller with whom 1 set out, 
pass through what difficulties I may, through whatever dangers and 
afflictions, I am not a whit nearer the home, unless a dungeon may 
be called so. This is no very agreeable theme ; but in so great a 
dearth of subjects to write upon, and especially impressed as I am 
at this moment with a sense of my own condition, I could choose 
no other. The weather is an exact emblem of my mind in its pres- 
ent state. A thick fog envelopes everything, and at the same time 
it freezes intensely. You will tell me that this cold gloom will be 
succeeded by a cheerful spring, and endeavour to encourage me to 
hope for a spiritual change resembling it ; — but it will be lost labour. 
Nature revives again ; but a soul once slain lives no more. The 
hedge that has been apparently dead, is not so ; it will burst into 
leaf and blossom at the appointed time ; but no such time is ap- 
pointed for the stake that stands in it. It is as dead as it seems, 
and will prove itself no dissembler. The latter end of next month 
will complete a period of eleven years in which I have spoken no 
other language. It is a long time for a man, whose eyes were 
once opened, to spend in darkness ; long enough to make despair 
an inveterate habit ; and such it is in me. My friends, I know, 
expect that I shall see yet again. They think it necessary to the 
existence of divine truth, that he who once had possession of it 
should never finally lose it. I admit the solidity of this reasoning 
in every case but my own. And why not in my own ? For causes 
which to them it appears madness to allege, but which rest upon 
my mind with a weight of immovable conviction. If I am recover- 
able, why am I thus .'' — why crippled and made useless in the 
Church, just at that time of life when, my judgment and experience 
being matured, I might be most useful ? — why cashiered and turned 
out of service, till, according to the course of nature, there is not 
life enough left in me to make amends for the years I have lost — 
till there is no reasonable hope left that the fruit can ever pay the 
expense of the fallow.'' I forestall the answer: — God's ways are 
mysterious, and He giveth no account of His matters — an answer 
that would serve my purpose as well as theirs to use it. There is 
a mystery in my destruction, and in time it shall be explained, 

" I am glad you have found so much hidden treasure ; and Mrs. 
Unwin desires me to tell you that you did her no more than justice 
in believing that she would rejoice in it. It is not easy to surmise 
the reason why the reverend doctor, your predecessor, concealed 
it. Being a subject of a free government, and I suppose full of 
the divinity most in fashion, he could not fear lest his riches should 
expose him to persecution. Nor can I suppose that he held it any 
disgrace for a dignitary of the Church to be wealthy, at a time 
when Churchmen in general spare no pains to become so. But the 
wisdom of some men has a droll sort of knavishness in it, much 
like that of a magpie, who hides A-^hat he finds with a deal of con- 
trivance, merely for the pleasure of doing it. 

" Mrs. Unwin is tolerably well. She wishes me to add that she 
shall be obliged to Mrs. Newton, if, when an opportunity offers, 



COWPER. ej 

she will give the worsted-merchant a jog. We congratulate you 
that Eliza does not grow worse, which I know you expected would 
be the case in the course of the winter. Present our love to her. 
Remember us to Sally Johnson, and assure yourself that wc re- 
mam as warmly as ever, Yours, W. C 

" M. U." 

In the next specimen we shall see the faculty of imparting in- 
terest to the most trivial incident by the way of telling it. The 
incident in this case is one which also forms the subject of the 
little poem called The Colubriad. 



To THE Rev. William Unwin. 

" Aug. 3rd, 1782. 

" My dear Friend, — Entertaining some hope that Mr. New- 
ton's next letter would furnish me with the means of satisfying 
your inquiry on the subject of Dr. Johnson's opinion, I have till 
now delayed my answer to your last ; but the information is not 
yet come, Mr. Newton having intermitted a week more than usual 
since his last writing. When I receive it, favourable or not, it shall 
be communicated to you ; but 1 am not very sanguine in my ex- 
pectations from that quarter. Very learned and very critical heads 
are hard to please. He may, perhaps, treat me with levity for the 
sake of my subject and design, but the composition, I think, will 
hardly escape his censure. Though all doctors may not be of the 
same mind, there is one doctor at least, whom I have lately dis- 
covered, my professed admirer. He too, like Johnson, was with 
difficulty persuaded to read, having an aversion to all poetry ex- 
cept the N^ight Thoughts ; which, on a certain occasion, when being 
confined on board a ship, he had no other employment, he got by 
heart. He was, however, prevailed upon, and read me several 
times over; so that if my volume had sailed with him, instead of 
Dr. Young's, I might, perhaps, have occupied that shelf in his 
memory which he then allotted to the Doctor : his name is Renny, 
and he lives at Newport Pagnel. 

" It is a sort of paradox, but it is true : we are never more in 
danger than when we think ourselves most secure, nor in reality 
more secure than when we seem to be most in danger. Both sides 
of this apparent contradiction were lately verified in my experience. 
Passing from the greenhouse to the barn, I saw three kittens (for 
we have so many in our retinue) looking with fixed attention at 
something, which lay on the threshold of a door, coiled up. I 
took but little notice of then at first ; but a loud hiss engaged me 
to attend more closely, when behold — a viper ! the largest I re- 
member to have seen, rearing itself, darting its forked tongue, and 
ejaculating the aforementioned hiss at the nose of a kitten, almost 
in contact with his lips. I ran into the hall for a hoe with a long 
handle, with which I intended to assail him, and returning in a few 



68 COWPER. 

seconds missed him % he was gone, and J feared had escaped me. 
Still, however, the kitten sat watching immovably upon the same 
spot. I concluded, therefore, that, sliding between the door and 
the threshold, he had found his way out of the garden into the 
yard. I went round immediately^ and there found him in close 
conversation with the old cat, whose curiosity being excited by so 
novel an appearance, inclined her to pat his head repeatedly with 
her fore foot ; with her claws, however, sheathed, and not in anger, 
but in the way of philosophical inquiry and examinationo To pre- 
vent her falling a victim to so laudable an exercise of her talents, 
I interposed in a moment with the hoe, and performed an act of 
decapitation, which, though not immediately mortal, proved so in 
the end. Had he slid into the passages, where it is dark, or had 
he, when in the yard, met with no interruption from the cat, and 
secreted himself in any of the outhouses, it is hardly possible but 
that some of the family must have been bitten ; he might have 
been trodden upon without being perceived, and have slipped away 
before the sufferer could have well distinguished what foe had 
wounded him. Three years ago we discovered one in the same 
place, which the barber slew with a trowel. 

" Our proposed removal to Mr. Small's was, as you suppose, a 
jest, or rather a joco-serious matter. We never looked upon it as 
entirely feasible, yet we saw in it something so like practicability, 
that we did not esteem it altogether unworthy of our attention. 
It was one of those projects which people of hvely imaginations play 
with, and admire for a few days, and then break in pieces. Lady 
Austen returned on Thursday from London, where she spent the last 
fortnight, and whither she was called by an unexpected opportunity 
to dispose of the remainder of her lease. She has now, therefore, 
no longer any connexion with the great city; she has none on 
earth whom she calls friends but us, and no house but at Olney. 
Her abode is to be at the Vicarage, where she has hired as much 
room as she wants, which she will embellish with her own furni^ 
ture, and which she will occupy, as soon as the minister's wife has 
produced another child, which is expected to make its entry in 
October. 

"Mr. Bull, a dissenting minister of Newport, a learned, inge- 
nious, good-natured, pious friend of ours, who sometimes visits us, 
and whom we visited last week, has put into my hands three voU 
umes of French poetry, composed by Madame Guyon ; — a quietist, 
say you, and a fanatic ; I will have nothing to do with her. It is 
very well, you are welcome to have nothing to do with her, but in 
the meantime her verse is the only French verse I ever read that 
I found agreeable ; there is a neatness in it equal to that which we 
applaud with so much reason in the compositions of Prior. I have 
translated several of them, and shall proceed in my translations 
till I have filled a Lilliputian paper-book I happen to have by _me, 
which, when filled, I shall present to Mr. Bull. He is her passion- 
ate admirer, rode twenty miles to see her picture in the house of 
a stranger, which stranger pohtely insisted on his acceptance of it. 



COWPER. 69 

and it now hangs over his parlour chimney. It is a striking por- 
trait, too characteristic not to be a strong resemblance, and were it 
encompassed with a glory, instead of being dressed in a nun's 
hood, might pass for the face of an angel. 

" Our meadows are covered with a winter-flood in August ; the 
rushes with which our bottomless chairs were to have been bot- 
tomed, and much hay, which was not carried, are gone down the 
river on a voyage to Ely, and it is even uncertain whether they 
will ever return. Sic transit gloria iimndi ! 

" I am glad you have found a curate ; may he answer ! Am 
happy in Mrs. Bouverie's continued approbation ; it is worth while 
to write for such a reader. Yours, W. C. " 

The power of imparting interest to commonplace incidents is 
so great that we read with a sort of excitement a minute account 
of the conversion of an old card-table into a writing and dining 
tal:)le, with the causes and consequences of that momentous event; 
curiosity having been first cunningly aroused by the suggestion 
that the clerical friend to whom the letter is addressed might, if the 
mystery were not explained, be haunted by it when he was getting 
into his pulpit, at which time, as he had told Cowper, perplexing 
questions were apt to come into his mind. 

A man who lived by himself could have little but himself to write 
about. Yet in these letters there is hardly a touch of offensive 
egotism. Nor is there any querulousness, except that of religious 
despondency. From those weaknesses Cowper was free. Of his 
proneness to self-revelation we have had a specimen already. 

The minorantiquities of the generations immediately preceding 
ours are becoming rare, as compared with those of remote ages, 
because nobody thinks it worth while to preserve them. It is al- 
most as easy to get a personal memento cf Priam or Nimrod as it 
is to get a harpsichord, a spinning-wheel, a tinder-box, or a scratch- 
back. An Egyptian wig is attainable, a wig of the Georgian era is 
hardly so, much less a tie of the Regency. So it is with the scenes 
of common life a century or two ago. They are being lost, because 
tb.ey were famihar. Here are two of them, howeve'r, which have 
limned themselves with the distinctness of the camera-obscura on 
the page of a chronicler of trifles. 

To THE Rev. John Newton. 

Nov. 17th, 1783. 
" My dear Friend. — The country around is much alarmed 
with apprehensions of fire. Two have happened since that of Olney. 
One at Hitchin, where the damage is said to amount to eleven 
thousand pound-s ; and another, at a place not far from Hitchin, 
of which I have not yet learnt the name. Letters have been 
dropped at Bedford, threatening to burn the town; and the inhabi- 
tants have been so intimidated as to have place a guard in many 
parts of it, several nights past. Since our conflagration here, we 



70 



CO IVPEK. 



have sent two vvoman and a boy to the justice for depredation; 
S.R. for stealing a piece of beef, which, in her excuse, she said slie 
intended to take care of. This lady, whom you well remember, 
escaped for want of evidence ; not that evidence v.^as wanting;, but 
our men of Gotham judged it unnecessary to send it. With her 
went the 'Toman I mentioned before, who, it seems, has made 
some sort of profession, but upon this occasion allowed herself a 
latitude of conduct rather inconsistent with it, having filled her 
apron with wearing-apparel, which she likewise intended to take 
care of. She would have gone to the county gaol, had William 
Raban, the baker's son, who prosecuted, insisted upon it; but he, 
good-naturedly, though I think weakly, interposed in her favour, 
and begged her off. The young gentleman wliO accompanied these 
fair ones is the junior son of Molly BoswelL He had stolen some 
iron-work, the property of Griggs the butcher. Being convicted, 
he was ordered to be whipped, which operation he underwent at 
the cart's tail, from the stone-bouse to the high arch, and back 
again. He seemed to show great fortitude, but it was all an im- 
position upon the public. The beadle, vA\o performed it, had filled 
his left hand with yellow ochre, through which, after every stroke, 
he drew the lash of his whip, leaving the appearance of a wound 
upon the skin, but in reality not hurting him at all. This being 
perceived by Mr. Constable H., who followed the beadle, he applied 
his cane, without any such management or precaution, to the 
shoulders of the too merciful executioner. The scene immediately 
became more interesting. The beadle could by no means be pre- 
vailed upon to strike hard, which provoked the constable to strike 
harder ; and this double flogging continued, till a lass of Silver- 
End, pitying the pitiful beadle thus suffering under the hands of 
the pitiless constable, joined the procession, and placing herself 
immediately behind the latter, seized him by his capillary club, and 
pulling him backwards by the same, slapped his face with a most 
Amazon fury,. This concatenation of events has taken up more 
of my paper than I intended it should, but I could not forbear to 
inform you how the beadle thrashed the thief, the constable the 
beadle, and the lady the constable, and how the thief Avas the only 
person concerned who suffered nothing. Mr. Teedon has been 
here, and is gf^^ne acrain. He came to thank me for some left-off 
clothes. In answer to our inquiries after his health, he replied 
that he had a slow fever, which made him take all possible care 
not to inflame his blood. I admitted his prudence, but in his par- 
ticular instance could not verv clearlv discern the need of it. 
Pump water will not heat him much ; and, to speak a little in his 
own style, more inebriating fluids are to him, I fancy, not very at- 
tainable. He brought us news, the truth of which, however, I do 
not vouch for, that the town of Bedford was actually on fire yester- 
day, and the flames not extinguished when the bearer of the tidings 
left it. 

" Swift observes, when he is giving his reasons why the preacher 
is elevated always above his hearers, that, let the crowd be as 



COWPER. 



n 



great as it will below there is alsvays room enough overTiead. If the 
French philosophers can carry their art of flying to the perfection 
they desire, the observation maybe reversed, the crowd, will Idc 
overhead, and they will have most room who stay below. I can' 
assure you, however, upon my own experience, that tliis way of 
travelling is very dehghtful. I dreamt a night or two since that I 
drove myself tlirough the upper regions in a balloon and pair, 
with the greatest ease and security. Having finished the tour I 
intended, I made a short turn, and with one flourish of my whip, 
descended ; my horses prancing and curvetting with an infinite 
share of spirit, but without the least danger, either to me or my 
vehicle. The time, we may suppose, is at hand, and seems to be 
prognosticated by my dream, when these airy excursions v/ill be 
universal, when judges will fly the circuit, and bishops their visita- 
tions ; and when the tour of Europe will be performed with much 
greater speed, and with equal advantage, by all who travel merely 
for the sake of having it to say that they have made. 

" I beg you will accept for yourself and yours our unfeigned 
love, and remember me affectionately to Mr. Bacon, when you 
see him. Yours, my dear friend, 

" Wm. Cowper." 

To THE Rev. John Newton. 

" March 29th, 1784. 

" My dear Friend, — It being his Majesty's pleasure that I 
should yet hav^ another opportunity to write before he dissolves 
the Parliament, I avail myself of it with all possible alacrity. I 
thank \'0u for your last, which was not the less welcome for coming, 
like an extraordinary gazette, at a time when it was not expected. 

"As when the sea is uncommonly agitated, the water finds its 
way into creeks and holes of rocks, which in its calmer state it 
never reaches, in like manner the effect of these turbulent times is 
felt even at Orchard Side, where, in general, we live as undisturbed 
by the political element as shrimps or cockles that have been acci- 
dentally deposited in some hollow beyond the water-mark, by the 
usual dashing of the waves. We were sitting yesterday after din- 
ner, the two ladies and myself, very composedly, and without the 
least apprehension of any'such intrusion in our snug parlour, one 
lady knitting, the other netting, and the gentleman winding worsted, 
when to our unspeakable surprise a mob appeared before the win- 
dow : a smart rap was heard at the door, the boys bellowed, and 
the maid announced Mr. Grenville. Puss was unfortunately let 
out of her box, so that the candidate, with all his good friends at 
his heels, wps refused admittance at the grand entry, and referred 
to the back door, as the only possible way of approach. 

" Candidates are creatures not very susceptible of affronts, and 
would rather, I suppose, climb in at the window than be absolutely 
excluded. In aminute, the yard, the kitchen, and the parlour were 
filled. Mr. Grenville, advancing toward me, shook me by the hand 



7 2 COWPER. 

with a degree of cordiality that was extremely seducing. As soon 
as he, and as many more as could find chairs, were seated, he be- 
«an to open the intent of his visit, I told him I had no vote, for 
which he readily gave me credit. 1 assured him I had no influence, 
w^hich he was not equally inclined to believe, and the less, no doubt, 
because Mr. Ashburner, the draper, addressing himself to me at 
this moment, informed me that I had a great deal. Supposing that 
I could not be possessed of such a treasure without knowing it, I 
ventured to confirm my first assertion by saying, that if I had any 
I was utterly at a loss to imagine where it could be, or wherein it 
consisted. Thus ended the conference. Mr. Grenville squeezed 
me by the hand again, kissed the ladies, and withdrew. He kissed, 
likewise, the maid in the kitchen, and seemed, upon the whole, a 
most loving, kissing, kind-hearted gentleman. He is very young, 
,Senteel, and handsome. He has a pair of very good eyes in his 
head, which not being sufficient as it should seem for the many 
nice and difficult purposes of a senator, he has a third also, which 
he suspended from his l)uttonhole. The boys halloo 'd ; the dogs 
barked; puss scampered; the hero, with his long train of obsequi- 
ous followers, withdrew. We made ourselves very merry witli the 
adventure, and in a short time settled into our former tranquility, 
never probably to be thus interrupted more. I thought myself, 
however, happy in being able to affirm truly that I had not that in- 
fluence for which he sued ; and which, had I been possessed of it, 
with my present views of the dispute between the Crown and the 
Commons, I must have refused him, for he is on the side of the 
former. It is comfortable to be of no consequence in a world where 
one cannot exercise any without disobliging somebody. The town, 
however, seems to be much at his service, and if he be equally suc- 
cessful throughout the country, he will undoubtedly gain his elec- 
tion. Mr. Ashburner, perhaps, was a little mortified, because it 
was evident that I owed the honour of this visit toliis misrepresen- 
tation of my importance. But had he thought proper to assure Mr. 
Grenville that I had three heads, I should not, I suppose, have 
been bound to produce them. 

'• Mr. Scott, who you say w^as so much admired in your pulpit, 
would be equally admired in his own, at least by all capable judges, 
were he not so apt to be angry with his congregation. This hurt 
him, and had he the understanding and eloquence of Paul himself, 
would still hurt him. He seldom, hardly ever indeed, preaches a 
gentle, well-tempered sermon, but I hear it highly commended ; but 
warmth of temper, indulged to a degree that may be called scold- 
ing, defeats the end of preaching. It is a misapplication of his 
powers, which it also cripples, and tears away his liearers. But 
he is a good man, and may perhaps outgrow it. 

" Many thanks for the worsted, which is excellent. We are as 
well as a spring hardly less severe than the severest winter will 
give us leave to be. With our united love, we conclude ourselves 
yours and Mrs. Newton's affectionate and faithful, W. C. 

M. U." 



COWPER. 73 

In 1789 the French Revolution, advancing with thunder-tread, 
makes even the hermit of Weston look up for a moment from his 
translation of Homer, though he little dreamed that he, with his 
gentle philanthropy and sentimentalism, had anything to do with 
the great overturn of the social and political systems of the past. 
From time to time some crash of especial magnitude awakens a 
faint echo in the letters. 



To Lady Hesketh. 



"July 7th, 1790. 



" Instead of beginning with the saffron-vested mourning to 
which Homer invites me, on a morning that has no saffron vest to 
boast, I shall begin with you. It is irksome to us both to wait so 
long as we must for you, but we are willing to hope that by a longer 
stay you will make us amends for all this tedious procrastination. 

" Mrs. Unwin has made known her whole case to Mr. Gregson, 
whose opinion of it has been very consolatory to me ; he says, in- 
deed, it is a case perfectly out of the reach of all physical aid, but 
at the same time not at all dangerous. Constant pain is a sad 
grievance, whatever part is affected, and she is hardly ever free 
from an aching head, as well as an uneasy side ; but patience is an 
anodyne of God's own preparation, and of that he gives her largely. 

"The French who, like all lively folks, are extreme in every- 
thing^, are such in their zeal for freedom ; and if it were possible to 
make so noble a. cause ridiculous, their manner of promoting it 
could not fail to do so. Princes and peers reduced to plain gentle- 
manship, and gentles reduced to a level with their own lackeys, 
are excesses of which they will repent hereafter. Differences of 
rank and subordination are, I believe, of God's appointment, and 
consequently essential to the well-being of society ; but what we 
mean by fanaticism in religion is exactly that which animates their 
politics ; and, unless time should sober them, they will, after all, 
be an unhappy people. Perhaps it deserves not much to be won- 
dered at, that at their first escape from tyrannic shackles they 
should act extravagantly, and treat their kings as they have some- 
times treated their idol. To these, however, they are' reconciled in 
due time again, but their respect for monarchy, is at an end. They 
want nothing now but a little English sobriety, and that they v.-ant 
extremely. I heartily wish them some wit in their anj^er, for it 
were great pity that so many millions should be miserable for want 
of it." 

This, it will be admitted, is very moderate and unapocalvDtic. 
Presently Monarchical Europe takes arms against the Revolution. 
But there are two political observers at least who see that Monarch- 
ical Europe is making a mistake — Kaunitz and Cowper. " The 
French," observes Cowper to Lady Heslceth in December, 1792, 
"are a vain and childish people, and conduct themselves on this 
grand occasion with a levity and extravagance nearly akin to mad- 



74 COWPER. 

ness : but it would have been better for Austria and Prussia to let 
them alone. All nations have a right to choose their own form of 
government, and the sovereignty of the people is a doctrine that 
evinees itself; for, vviienever the people choose to be masters, thev 
always are so, and none can hinder them. God grant that we mav 
have no revolution here, but unless we have reform, we certainlV 
shall. Depend upon it, my dear, the hour has come when power 
founded on patronage and corrupt majorities must govern this land 
no longer. Concessions, too, must be made to Dissenters of everv 
denomination. They have a right to them— a right to all the priv- 
ileges of Englishmen, and sooner or later, by fair means or bv 
foul, they will have them." Even in 1793, though he expresses, as 
he well might, a cordial abhorrence of the doings of the French, he 
calls them not fiends, but " madcaps." He expresses the strongest 
indignation against the Tory mob which sacked Priestley's house 
at Birmingham, as he does, in justice be it said, against 'all mani- 
festations of fanaticism. We cannot help sometimes wishing, as 
we read these passages in tlie letters, that their calmness'^and 
reasonableness could have been communicated to another " Old 
Whig," who was setting the world on fire with his anti-revolution- 
ary rhetoric. 

It is true, as has already been said, tha.t Cowper was "extra- 
mundane; '' and that his political reasonableness was in part the 
result of the fancy that he and his fellow-saints had nothing to do 
with the world but to keep themselves clear of it, and let it go its 
own wav to destruction. But it must also be admitted that while 
the wealth of Establishments of which Burke was the ardent de- 
fender, is necessarilv reactionary in the highest degree, the ten- 
dency of religion itself, wbere it is genuine and sincere, must be to 
repress any selfish feeling about class or position, and to make men, 
in tem.poral matters, more willing to sacrifice the present to the 
future. e?peciallv where the hope is held out of moral as well as of 
material improvement. Thus it has come to pass that men who 
professed and im.a?ined themselves to have no interest in this 
World have practicallv been its great reformers and improvers in 
the political and material as well as in the moral sphere. 

The b^t <;Decimpn shall be one in the more sententious style, and 
one which proves that Cowper was capable of writing in a judicious 
manner on a difficult and delicate question— even a question so 
difficult and so delicate as that of the propriety of painting the face. 

To THE Rev. William Uxwix. 

''■:May 3d, 1784. 
"My Dear Friend.— The subject of face painting maybe 
considered. I think, in two points of view. First, there is room for 
dispute with respect to the consistency of the practice with good 
morals: and, secondlv. whether it be. on the w'hole. convenient or 
not, mav be a matter' worth v of agitation. I set out with all the 
formality of logical disquisition, but do not promise to observe the 



VOWPER. 75 

same re,?ularity any further tlian it may comport with my purpose 
of writino- as fast as 1 can. 

'' As to the immorality of the custom, were I in France, I should 
see none. On the contrary, in seems in that country to be a symp- 
tom of m<odest consciousness, and a tacit confession of what ail 
know to be true, that French faces have, in fact, neither r«d nor 
wiiite of their own. This humble acknowledgment of a defect 
looks the more like a virtue, being found among a people not re- 
markable for humility. Again, before we can prove the practice to 
be immoral, we must prove immorality in the design of those who 
use it ; either that they intend a deception, or to kindle unlawful 
desires in the beholders. But the French ladies, so far as their 
purpose comes in question, must be acquitted of both these charges^ 
Nobodv supposes their colour to be natural for a moment, any more 
than he would if it w^ere blue or green ; and this unam.biguous 
judgment of the matter is owing to two causes : first, to the univer- 
sal "knowledge we liave, that French women are naturally either 
brov/n or yellow, with very few exceptions ; and secondly, to the 
inartificial manner in which they paint; for they do not, as 1 am 
most satisfactorily informed, even attempt an imitation of nature, 
but besmear themselves hastily, and at a venture, anxious only to 
lay on enough. Where, therefore, there is no wanton intention, 
nor a wish to deceive. I can discover no immorality. But in Eng- 
land. I am afraid our painted ladies are not clearly entitled to the 
same apology. They even imitate nature with such exactness that 
the whole public is sometimes divided into parties, who litigate 
with great warmth the question whether painted or not ? This was 

remarkably the case with a Miss B , whom I well remember. 

Her roses and lilies were never discovered to be spurious till she 
attained an age that made the supposition of tlieir being natural im- 
possible. This anxiety to be not merely red and white, which is 
all they aim at in France, but to be thought very beautiful, and 
much more beautiful than Nature has made them, is a symptom not 
very favourable to the idea we would wish to entertain of the chas- 
tity, purity, and modesty of our countrywomen. That they are 
guilty of a design to deceive, is certain. Otherwise why so much 
art.f* and if to deceive, wherefore and with what purpose? Cer- 
tainly either to gratify vanity of the silliest kind, or, which is still 
more criminal, to decoy and enveigle, and carry on more success- 
fully the business of temptation. Here, therefore, my opinion splits 
itself into two opposite sides upon the same question. I can sup- 
pose a French woman, though painted an inch deep, to be a virtu 
ous, discreet, excellent character; and in no instance should f 
think the worse of one because she was painted. But an English 
belle must pardon me if I have not the same charity for her. Shfe 
is at least an impostor, whether she cheats me or not, because she 
means to do so; and it is well if that be all the censure that sh^ 
deserves. 

'• This brings me to my second class of ideas upon this topic ; 
and here I feel that I should be fearfully puzzled were I called 



76 



COWPER. 



upon to recommend the practice on the score of ccnvenience. If 
a husband chose that his wife should paint, perhaps it might be her 
duty, as well as her interest, to comply. But I think he would not 
much consult his own, for reasons that will follow. In the first 
place, she would admire herself the more ; and in the next, if she 
managed the matter well, she might be more admired by others ; 
an acquisition that might bring her virtue under trials, to which 
otherwise it might never have been exposed. In no other case, 
however can I imagine the practice in this country to be either 
expedient or convenient. As a general one it certainly is not ex- 
pedient, because, in general, English women have no occasion for 
it. A swarthy coniplexion is a rarity here ; and the sex, especially 
since inoculation has been so much in use, have very little cause 
to complain that nature has not been kind to them in the article 
of complexion. They may hide and spoil a good one, but they 
cannot, at least they hardly can, give themselves a better. But 
even if they could, there is yet a tragedy in the sequel which should 
make them tremble. 

'• I understand that in France, thouo-h the use of rouge be £:en- 
eral, the use of white paint is far from being so. In England, she 
that uses one commonly uses both. Now, all white paints, or lotions, 
or whatever they may be called, are mercurial ; consequently 
poisonous, consequently ruinous, in time, to the consiitution. The 

Miss B ■ above mentioned was a miserable witness of this truth 

it being certain that her flesh fell from her bones before she died. 
Lady Coventry was hardly a less melancholy proof of it ; and a 
London physician, perhaps, were he at liberty to blab, could publish 
a bill of female mortality, of a length that w^ould astonish us. 

'• For these reasons I utterly condemn the practice, as it obtains 
in England ; and for a reason superior to all these, I must disap- 
prove of it. I cannot, indeed, discover that Scripture forbids it in 
so many words. But that anxious solicitude about the person, 
which such an artifice evidently betrays, is, I am sure, contrary to 
the tenor and spirit of it throughout. Show me a woman with a 
painted face, and I will show you a woman whose heart is set on 
things of the earth, and not on thinsfs above. 

" But this observation of mine applies to it onlv when it is an 
imitative art. For, in the use of French women, I think it is as 
innocent as in the use of a wild Indian, who draws a circle round 
her face, and makes two spots, perhaps blue, perhaps white, in the 
middle of it. Such are my thoughts upon the matter. 

" Vive valcque. 

" Yours ever, 

" W. C." 

These letters have been chosen as illustrations of Cowpers 
epistolary style, and for that purpose they have been given entire. 
But they are also the best pictures of his character ; and his char- 
acter is everything. The events of his life worthy of record might 
all be comprised in a dozen pages. 



COWFER, ^^ 



CHAPTER VIIL 

CLOSE OF LIFE. 

COWPER says there could not have been a happier trio on earth 
than Lady Hesketh, Mrs. Unwin, and himself. Nevertheless, after 
his removal to Weston, he again went mad, and once more at- 
tempted self-destruction. His malady was constitutional, and it 
settled down upon him as his years increased, and his strenoth 
failed. He was now sixty. The Olney physicians, instead of ims- 
banding his vital power, had wasted it away seciuidiwi artem by 
purging, bleeding, and emetics. He had overworked himself on 
his fatal translation of Homer, under the burden of which he moved, 
as he says himself, like an ass overladen with sand-bao-s. He had 
been getting up to work at six, and not breakfasting till eleven. And 
now the life from which his had for so many years been fed, itself 
began to fail. Mrs. Unwin was stricken with'paralysis ; the stroke 
was sHght, but of its nature there was no doubt. Her days of 
bodily life were numbered : of mental life there remained to her a 
still shorter span. Her excellent son. William Unwin, had died of 
a fever soon after the removal of the pair to Weston. He had 
been engaged in the work of his profession as a clergyman, and 
we do not hear of his being often at Olney. But he was in con- 
stant correspondence with Cowper, in whose heart as well as in 
that of Mrs. Unwin. his death must have left a great void, and his 
support was withdrawn just at the moment when it was about to 
become most necessarv. 

Happily, just at tliis juncture a new and a good friend appeared. 
Hayley was a mediocre poet, who had for a time obtained distinc- 
tion above his merits. Afterwards his star had declined, but 
having an excellent heart, he had not been in the least soured by 
the downfall of his reputation. He was addicted to a pompous 
rotundity of style ; perhaps he was rather absurd ; but he was 
thoroughly good-natured, very anxious to make himself useful, and 
devoted to Cowper, to whom, as a poet, he looked up with an ad- 
miration unalloyed by any other feeling. Both of them, as it hap- 
pened, were engaged on Milton, and an attempt had been made 
to set them by the ears ; but Hayley took advantage of it to intro- 
duce himself to Cowper with an effusion of the warmest esteem. 
He was at Weston when Mrs. Unwin was attacked with paralysis, 
and displayed his resource by trying to cure her with an electric- 



^8 COWPER. 

machine. At Eartbam, on the coast of Sussex, he had, by an ex« 
penditure beyond his means, made for himself a little paradise, 
where it was his delight to gather a distinguished circle. To this 
place he gave the pair a pressing invitation, whicii was accepted in 
the vain hope that a change might do Mrs. Unwin good. 

From Weston to Eartham was a three days' journey, an enter- 
prise not undertaken without much trepidation and earnest pra3^er. 
It was safely accomplished, however, the enthusiastic Mr. Rose 
walking to meet his poet and philosopher on the way. Hayley had 
tried to get Thurlow to meet Cowper. A sojourn in a country 
house with the tremendous Thurlow, the only talker for whom 
Johnson condescended to prepare himself, would have been rather 
an overpowering pleasure ; and perhaps, after all, it was as well 
that Hayley could only get Cowper's disciple, Hurdis, afterwards 
professor of poetry at Oxford, and Charlotte Smith. 

At Eartham, Cowper's portrait was painted by Romney. 

"Romney, expert infallibly to trace 
On chart or canvas not the form alone 
And semblance, but, however faintly shown 
The mind's impression too on every face, 
With strokes that time ought never to erase, 
Thou hast so pencilled mine that though I own 
The subject worthless, I have never known 
The artist shining with superior grace ; 
But this I mark, that symptoms none of woe 
In thy incomparable work appear : 
Well : I am satisfied it should be so, 
Since on maturer thought the cause is clear ; 
For in my looks what sorrow could'st thou sec 
When I was Hayley's guest and sat to thee." 

Southey observes that it was likely enough there would be no 
melancholy in the portrait, but that Hayley and Romney fell into 
a singular error in mistaking for "the light of genius " what Leigh 
Hunt calls "a fire fiercer than that either of intellect or fancy, 
gleaming from the raised and protruded eye." 

Hayley evidently did his utmost to make his guest happy. 
They spent the hours in literary chat, and compared notes about 
Milton. The first days were days of enjoyment. But soon the 
recluse began to long for his nook at Weston. Even the exten- 
siveness of the view at Eartham made his mind ache, and increased 
his melancholy. To Weston the pair returned ; the paralytic, of 
course, none the better for her journey. Her mind as well as her 
body was now rapidly giving v/ay. We quote as biography that 
which is too well known to be quoted as poetry. 

TO MARY. 

The tv\'enticth year is well-nigh past 
Since first our sky was overcast : — 
Ah, would that this might be the last ! 

Mv Marv \ 



cow PER. 79 

Thy spirits have a fainter flow, 

I see thee daily weaker grow : — 

'Tvvas my distress that brought thee low, 

My Mary I 

Thy needles, once a shining store, 
For my sake restless heretofore, 
Now rust disused, and shine no more, 

My Mary ! 

For though thou gladly wouldst fulfil 
The same kind office for me still, 
Thy sight now seconds not thy will, 

My Mary ! 

But well thou play'dst the housewife's part, 
And all thy threads with magic art. 
Have wound themselves about this heart, 

My Mary! 

Thy indistinct expressions seem 

Like language utter'd in a dream : 

Yet me they charm, whate'er the theme, 

My Mary ! 

Thy silver locks, once auburn bright, 
Are still more lovelv in my sight 
Than golden beams of orient light. 

My Mary ! 

For could I view nor them nor thee, 
"What sight worth seeing could I see ? 
The sun would rise in vain for me, 

My Mary! 

Partakers of thy sad decline, 

Thy hands their little force resign ; 

Yet gently press'd, press gently mine, 

My Mary ! 

vSuch feebleness of limbs thou provest, 
That now at every step thou movest, 
Upheld bv two ; yet still thou lovest, 

My Mary ! 

And still to love, though press'd with ill, 
In wintry age to feel no chill. 
With me is to be loveh' still, 

My Mary ! 

But ah ! by constant heed I know, 
How oft the sadness that I show 
Transforms thy smiles to looks of woe, 

My Mary I 



S0 COWPEJ?. 

And should my future lot be cast 
With much resemblance of the past, 
Thy worn-out heart will break at last, 

My Mary ! 

Even love, at least the power of manifesting love, began to be- 
tray its mortality. She who had been so devoted, became, as her 
mind failed, exacting, and instead of supporting her partner, drew 
him down. He sank again into the depth of hypochondria. As 
usual, his malady took the form of religious horrors, and he fancied 
that he was ordained to undergo severe penance for his sins. Six 
days he sat motionless and silent, almost refusing to take food. 
His physician suggested, as the only chance of arousing him, that 
Mrs. Unwin should be induced, if possible, to invite him to go out 
with her ; with difficulty she was made to understand what they 
wanted her to do ; at last she said that it was a fine morning, and she 
should like a walk. Her partner at once rose and placed her arm 
in his. Almost unconsciously, she had rescued him from the evil 
spirit for the last time. The pair were in doleful plight. When 
their minds failed they had fallen in a miserable manner under the 
influence of a man named Teedon, a schoolmaster crazed with self- 
conceit, at whom Covvper in his saner mood had laughed, but 
whom he now treated as a spiritual oracle, and a sort of medium of 
communication with the spirit-world, writing down the nonsense 
which the charlatan talked. Mrs. Unwin, being no longer in a 
condition to control the expenditure, the housekeeping, of course, 
went wrong; and at the same time her partner lost the protection 
of the love-inspired tact by which she had always contrived to 
shield his weakness and to secure for him, in spite of his eccentric- 
ities, respectful treatment from his neighbours. Lady Hesketh's 
health had failed, and she had been obliged to go to Bath. Hayley 
now proved himself no mere lion-hunter, but a true friend. In 
conjunction with Cowper's relatives, he managed the removal of 
the pair from Weston to Mundsley, on the coast of Norfolk, where 
Cowper seemed to be soothed by the sound of the sea ; then to 
Dunham Lodge, near Swaffham ; and finally (in 1796) to East 
Dereham, where, two months after their arrival, Mrs. Unwin died. 
Her partner was barely conscious of his loss. On the morning of 
her death he asked the servant " whether there was life above 
stairs ? " On being taken to see the corpse, he gazed at it for a 
moment, uttered one passionate cry of grief, and never spoke of 
Mrs. Unwin more. He had the misfortune to survive her three 
years and a half, during which relatives and friends were kind, and 
Miss Perowne partly filled the place of Mrs. Unwin. Now and 
then there was a gleam of reason and faint revival of literary faculty ; 
but composition was confined to Latin verse or translation, with one 
memorable and almost awful exception. The last original poem 
written by Cowper was The Castaway, founded on an incident in 
Anson's Voyage. 



COVVPER. 8* 



'* Obscurest night involved the sky, 
The Atlantic billows roared, 
When such a destined wretch as I, 
Wash'd headlong from on board, 
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, 
His floating home forever left 

*' No braver chief could Albion boast 
Than he with whom he went, 

Nor ever ship left Albion's coast 
With warmer wishes sent. 

He loved them both, but both in vain ; 

Nor him beheld, nor her again. 

" Not long beneath the whelming brine, 

Expert to swim, he lay ; 
Nor soon he felt his strength decline, 

Or courage die away ; 
But waged with death a lasting strife, 
Supported by despair of life. 

** Pie shouted ; nor his friends had fail'd 
To check the vessel's course, 
But so the furious blast prevail' 

That pitiless perforce 
They left their outcast mate behi 
And scudded still before the wind. 

" Some succour yet they could afford ; 
And, such as storms allow, 
The cask, the coop, the floated cord, 

Delay'd not to bestow : 
But he, they knew, nor ship nor shore, 
Whate'er they gave, should visit more. 

"Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he 
Their haste himself condemn, 
Aware that t^ight in such a sea 

Alone could rescue them; 
Yet bitter felt it still to die 
Deserted, and his friends so nigh. 

" He long survives, who lives an hour 

In ocean, self-upheld ; 
And so long he, with unspent power 

His destiny repelled: 
And ever, as the minutes flew, 
Entreated help, or cried — ' Adieu I" 

** At length, his transient respite past. 

His comrades, who before 

Had heard his voice in every blast. 

Could catch the sound no more : 

For then, by toil subdued, he drank 

The stifling wave, and then he scnk. 



8- COWPER. 

*• No poet wept him ; but the page 
Of narrative sincere, 
That tells his name, his worth, his age, 

Is wet with Anson's tear : 
And tears by bards or heroes shed 
Alike immortalise the dead. 

" I therefore purpose not, or dream, 

Descanting on his fate, 
To give the melancholy theme 

A more enduring date : 
But misery still delights to trace 
Its semblance ui another's case. 

" No voice divine the storm allay'd, 

No light propitious shone, 
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid, 

We perish'd, each alone : 
But I beneath a rougher sea, 
And v/helm'd in deeper gulfs than he." 

The despair which finds vent in verse is hardly despair. Poetry 
can never be the direct expression of emotion : it must be the pro- 
duct of reflection combined with an exercise of the faculty of com- 
position which in itself is pleasant. Still, The Castaway ought to be 
an antidote to religious depression, since it is the work of a man of 
whom it W'Ould be absurdity to think as really estranged from the 
spirit of good, who had himself done good to the utmost of his 
powers. 

Cowper died very peacefully on the morning of April 25, 
1800, and was buried in Dereham Church, where there is a nionu- 
ment to him with an inscription by Hayley, which, if it is not good 
poetry, is a tribute of sincere affection. 

Any one whose lot it is to write upon the life and works of 
Cowper must feel that there is an immense difference between the 
Miterest which attaches to him, and that which attaches to any one 
among the far greater poets of the succeeding age. Still there is 
something about him so attractive, his voice has such a silver tone, 
he retains, even in his ashes, such a faculty of winning friends, 
that his biographer and critic may be easily beguiled into giving 
him too high a place. He belongs to a particular religious move- 
ment, with the vitality of which the interest of a great part of his 
works has departed or is departing. Still more emphatically and 
in a still more important sense does he belong to Christianity. V\\ 
no natural struggle for existence would he have been the survivor; 
by no natural process of selection would he ever have been picked 
out as a vessel of honour. If the shield which for eighteen cen-. 
turies Christ, by His teaching and His death, has spread over the 
weak things of this world, should fail, and might should again 
become the title to existence and the measure of worth, Cowper 
will be cast aside as a specimen of despicable infirmity, and all who 
have said anything in his praise will be treated with the same scorru 



EmUCJLTIOM 



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GRAND, SQUARE AND UPRIGHT 



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with notes jo 

360. Modem Christianity a 
civilized Heathenism.. .. ij 



EEAUr AHS UEHTII FOOD. 




Vitalized Phos°phites 

COMPOSED OF THE NERVE-GIVING PRINCIPLES OF 
THE OX-BRAIN AND WHEAT-GERM. 



I 



It restores the energy lost by Nervousness or Indigestion ; relieve* 
Lassitude and Neuralgia; refreshes the nerves tired by worry, excite- 
ment, or excessive brain fatigue ; strengthens a failing memory, and 
gives renewed vigor in all diseases of Nervous Exhaustion or Debility. - 
It is the only PREVENTIVE FOR CONSUMPTION. 

It aids 'ijoonderfully in the mental and bodily growth of infanta and 
children. Under its use the teeth come easier, the bones grow better, the skin 
plumper and smoother; the brain acquires more readily, and rests and sleeps 
m^ore sweetly. An ill-fed brain learns no lessons, and is excusable \f peevish. 
It gives a hJappier and better childhood. 

"It is with tlie utmost confidence tliat I recommend this excellent pre- 
paration for the relief of indigestion and for general debility; nay, I do mora 
than recommend, 1 really urge all invalids to put it to the test, for in sev- 
eral cases personally known to me signal benefits have been derived from 
its use. I have recently watched its effects on a young friend who has 
suffered from indigestion all her life. After taking the Vitalized Phos- 
phites for a fortnight she said to me; ' I feel another person; it is a pleas- 
ure to live. * Many hard-working men and women — especially those engaged 
in brain work — would be saved from the fatal resort to chloral and other 
destructive stimulants, if they would Lave recourse to a remedy au oimpJ.« 
and so efficacious. " 

Emily Faithfull. 

Physicians have prescribed over 600.000 Packages BECAOStt thjb--^ 
KNOW its Composition, that it is not a secret remedy awd 

THAT the formula 13 PRINTED ON EVERY LABEL 

For Sale \iy JDrus:srl»t» or by ]M(all, 4||i. 

F. CROSBY CO., 56 West 25th Street. 






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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 158 768 7 ^1 



